


as you like it

by unsungillumination



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi has a palace AU, Gen, M/M, not P5R compliant, that’s how long I’ve been working on this fucking thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsungillumination/pseuds/unsungillumination
Summary: all the world’s a stageand all the men and women merely playersthey have their exits and their entrancesand one man in his time plays many parts.-akechi wasn’t dead: to begin with.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 88
Kudos: 401





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi. this has been in existence in some form since april of last year, and i’ve been holding off on posting it for some disagreeable combination of terror and hope that i’d have it more _done_ before sending it out. c’est la vie.
> 
> this fic really has become my baby in all the time i’ve spent lovingly beating it and myself with a rock. the planning document is 43 pages long and contains considerable research into architecture? i have so many loose files for this project i’ll be finding them in my shoes years from now.
> 
> without further preamble: my dear friends, please take your seats, and i do so hope you will enjoy the show.

_It’s bright. That’s the first blow to land. It’s too bright for comfort. Too bright for any phantom thief to stand without cowering. And the lack of a discernible light source is disconcerting only so far as they can afford to be disconcerted without going blind in contemplation._

_It’s loud, too, though none of them can identify what the sound actually is—all they can tell is that it’s_ fucking deafening _—_

_The building is crystalline and fractaling and the light bounces off every which way, dances at their feet and over their clothes—_

_“We’re in our phantom thief outfits,” Makoto manages, one hand shielding her eyes. “Are we already a threat?”_

_“I guess everyone in the world is,” Morgana says grimly over the cacophony. “Let’s get inside already. This is hurting my eyes.”_

_The door, blessedly, is as ostentatious and outstanding as the rest of it; they hurry toward it, the glittering skyline rising ominously overhead._

* * *

_\- This is truly an unjust game. –_

* * *

Futaba is the only Thief who doesn’t silence her phone. Ever. Ren attributes this partly to the fact that she has not yet had to accustom herself to the perils of classroom policy and partly to the fact that common courtesy was not, in her mind, a worthy enough cause to silence her lifeblood.

In lieu of her own courtesy he’s taken to spiriting her phone out her pocket before they enter the cinema and quieting it himself. There’re only so many more times he can get away with it, though, before she finally catches on, since even a master thief can’t explain three separate instances of 499+ come credits roll.

And anyway, it doesn’t matter to him most of the time. He himself is among the guiltiest of parties for the crime of glowing up the movie theatre. It didn’t much matter, he thought. The Yongen theatre was usually pretty quiet, fairly unpopulated, and its occupants generally indifferent to the misadventures of a few scrappy teens slash master criminals and what were social niceties anyway but a set of rules for the sake of rules? Futaba was Futaba, untouchable and yet fragile as a frosted impression, and nobody could tell her what to do, so who was he? to tell her she couldn’t interrupt an action film with a ringtone? because she could just as well as Ryuji could yell inanity to the heavens and not beware of the odd looks or Haru could quietly ask what a 777 was and Morgana could howl his lack of cattitude halfway through a packet of dry and Akechi Goro could seal the bulkhead and his fate all at once and be dead.

Oh.

Ren spins his phone on his knuckles again. Takemi had told him just a week ago his thoughts were wont to wander (and that it was _very annoying, guinea pig, I don’t pay you to zone out_ , to which he’d responded she didn’t pay him at all and she’d cuffed him over the crown with a set of pliers, which had hurt, but surely not so much as the bullet Akechi had just taken to the) but he doesn’t think that’s quite right actually because _wandering_ implied a lack of direction and his thoughts seemed to know quite exactly what they were doing and where they were going, just like Akechi had, when he’d sent himself to hell.

_Are you religious, Amamiya-kun?_ (And maybe that’s a harder question when you summon gods on the regular but they’re not so much _holy_ as they are _holey_ , haha, get it, because he shoots them quite a lot, just like)

(Is Akechi an atheist? He’d never struck them as a man of grace but who did anyway)

So Futaba’s phone is not on silent but the rest of theirs are, and the rest of them are, which is what started Ren on this tangent in the first place. Her keyboard makes those little artificial _tap_ sounds when she taps them. The haptic feedback. It’s loud. It actually might not be loud, but anything is _loud_ right now, loud as compared to a silence, louder compared to the silence after a goddamned gunshot. And it’s cold as all hell in this fucking crate of an attic. Which is not relevant, but which Ren clings to as something he can feel, because it’s usually his friends’ words he takes to ground him in moments like these and _nobody. Is. Speaking._

He’s spiralling. Very un-Thief-like. Very un-leader-like. _You know what else is un-leader-like? Letting one of your own seal himself away and hoard a bullet all to his own head—_

_—how selfish, Akechi! You ought to learn to share—_

He doesn’t realise he’s trembling until Ann rests a manicured hand over his own to stop his cup rattling coffee over the sides. There’s a puddle in his saucer. He hadn’t noticed.

She can’t meet his eyes. Her palm barely meets his knuckles. Just hovers. Maybe she doesn’t want to hurt him, or maybe she just doesn’t want more blood on her hands. His skin is raw and scraped from another him, a distant him, long past, of an hour or something like that ago, who was stupid enough to think he could punch his way through a wall which had torn through his gloves and then somehow perform a grand act of resurrection by—something. Or something else, since he’s so infallible. O, Joker! Bullets are nothing to Joker! The wild card, the trump card, and if only his teammates were only so bulletproof. If only his ex-teammates were only so

He sets the cup down on the floor and picks himself up off of it. Nods to Ann, whose eyes are fixed under his own, lips fixed into a smile.

_taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap_

_bang_ joker you have to stop _crash_ joker your hands are bleeding _bam_ joker he’s gone.

Kind of weird they never really have big reactions to this kind of thing.

“So,” says Makoto. Bless her. She sounds pained and more painfully awkward. Good for her, owning it. “Does anyone… want something to drink?”

Silence. Ren wishes she’d asked something else, because now he can’t even drop her a line unless he kicks his coffee over into the floorboards and pretends it never existed.

“I can make curry,” he offers instead.

“That’s not a drink,” Yusuke murmurs, correctly, and Ren does not say anything, because it’s not.

“Curry sounds great,” Ann says brightly. Oh, Ann; lovely, terrifying Ann, whom even a looming headstone couldn’t dim. She summons cheer as easily as Ren does demons, which is relieving and unnerving in equal measure, because now he has no way to tell when it’s real and when she’s fracturing and slapping glittery tape over the cracks.

She’d made him get an Instagram account several months ago and so far it’s two photographs of Morgana tying himself into knots trying to get comfortable and one of some cracked and broken pavement he’d taken by accident. Futaba had yelled at him for tagging everything _#relatable_ so he hasn’t stopped doing it. _#relatable_ , Ann. I have bandages if you need them. I bought them from the TV fourteen Sundays ago. If you need any for the psyche, or the wounds you got trekking through it.

They were pretty cheap. My cat told me it was a good deal.

Yusuke had told him once about _kintsukuroi_ , a practice in which broken or cracked pottery was mended by pouring gold lacquer into the cracks. The purpose, Yusuke had said, was to make something beautiful out of something ruined. In highlighting what had once been destroyed, the piece was to become something new, something better, stronger than ever.

Ren thinks about pouring gold into the cracks in his own psyche and wonders where he’d get some. If you don’t have homemade golden soul juice then perhaps store bought is fine. He could paint a bandage gold, or maybe crumble gold leaf into his rancid gravy and call it Luxury EX.

“You gonna go or what?” asks Futaba, still tapping her phone. “Can’t make curry by staring at the wall, old man.”

It’s an old joke. Borne of his hunchback and her broken youth. He’s an old man and this is the oldest he’s ever felt, like he’s been alive for centuries. “Got it.”

_Hey, wanna know who_ won’t _be alive for centuries?_

“Spicy or mild?” he says instead of that.

“If we say spicy are you gonna make that hell concoction again?” Futaba says, not looking up.

“I like it,” Ren says.

“You’re the only one,” mutters Ryuji, who needs juice to wash down pepper.

“It’s not so bad,” Makoto reasons, too kind.

Oh, but this is an extremely pointless conversation. Just a massive waste of time. “Thank you,” Ren says to Makoto.

“Yeah, you guys are just cowards,” says Ann, who needs juice to wash down garlic. “Not everyone’s as bad with spicy foods as you, Ryuji.”

“That’s not fair!” Ryuji snaps. “That shit’s as good as poison, man! No way I’m gonna get taken out by _curry_ after that bullshit in the Palace.”

“Be nice, Ryuji,” Makoto admonishes, like Ren’s feelings are going to be hurt by Ryuji’s Curry Opinions after the day they’ve had, or at all. “It has a certain… unique charm…”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Ryuji insists to Makoto’s defeated sigh. Fired up through this mindless chatter now with the honest energy he brings to everything by default, so much that Ren can almost borrow enough from the air around him to sit up straight. If a little more brittle from the tension. “I don’t have to suck up to Ren! I ain’t gonna fake like I can eat that crap, I’m not like effin’ A—”

It’s the stop more than the words themselves. The stop that freezes them all in place, because Ryuji _never_ stops talking, and as soon as he does it’s obvious what he’s about to say.

“Let’s go with mild,” Makoto says, too cheerfully. “Is that alright, Ren?”

But Futaba sits up suddenly and her phone falls to the floor with too loud a clatter and it’s louder still because the usual shriek and scramble doesn’t come with it, _Futaba isn’t checking if her phone is alright_ , which makes Makoto flinch, which makes the rest of them flinch.

“Hey, who are you talking about?” Futaba says. Her voice is ground and scraping metal bits and Ren needs to _not_ sink down and tuck his ears between his knees because that’s _not what they need from him right now, or ever_. “Huh?”

“Futaba,” Yusuke says, wary, the rare calm. The balance is shifting and the scales have cracked—ever their fulcrum Ren reaches, but the beam is shattering over him.

“Did someone die in there?” Futaba asks. Light and breezy like the wind at a hornet’s nest. “In that Palace? Maybe I don’t know. Maybe you have to _say the_ _name_. Or are we all gonna keep pretending like nothing happened? Let’s not think about it! Repression, my old friend! That _always_ works!”

“Futaba,” Haru says too, gentle, frightened. Ren’s coffee is still half in its saucer, spilled over where he shook, trying to contain too much. Ryuji’s mouth is open, teetering on an apology, but she’s not done.

She’s on her feet. “Or can’t you say the name now that he’s _dead_?” she says in possibly the closest she’s gotten to a real yell in all the time they’ve known her. Of the lot of them she came the closest to watching it happen. Watched his life stutter and blink off her radar like a failing spotlight and it’s not even the first time she’s seen someone die. Eyes wide and glasses wider and shrinking into the brittle shell she plasters over again each moment, like she’s a pearl, like she’s protecting from an internal irritant by growing it larger and larger and larger. “Are you _scared_?”

Ren is vaguely aware that he’s shaking again, but thank god no one’s noticed but Ann and she’s always taking his hand anyway. Plausible deniability remains. This isn’t how he wanted the tension to overflow. This isn’t _when_. He’s meant to go downstairs and simmer curry and reassurances, and then they’re all meant to leave knowing tomorrow is another day and their fearless leader’s gonna fearlessly lead them into it, Morgana keeping pace with Futaba for the night to provide comfort to the one who needs it and deserves to, and then he can climb back up the stairs and slowly and patiently tear his hair out in methodical shreds in the cosy quiet comfort of his own storage facility capacity of one. But they’re all frozen, and the carrots are still in the fridge, and Futaba is up and demanding the centre of attention. And up is down. And signals are gone.

“ _What’s wrong?_ ” Futaba shouts, and Ren is bracing for the deathly quiet again when the shot subsides once more. “ _You can’t say Akechi Goro?_ ”

Her phone, lying on the floorboards, didn’t break. It’s probably the most undamaged of the lot of them. And it’s the only one talking.

_Candidate found_.

* * *

_Pretty clean, this place. Neat as a pin for someone they’d last seen with his guts close to spilling through his armour._

* * *

No one asks why Futaba had the Nav open, because no one feels like denying the whole business had been on their minds. Oddly enough, new priorities have arisen.

It becomes chillingly clear at once that Ren’s the only one who might have a shadow of an inkling of what Akechi’s keywords might be, because they’ve spent all of a month with the man and none of the others have the slightest idea who he is, because they hadn’t wanted to.

That’s reasonable. Not everyone’s got Ren’s morbid curiosity or penchant for throwing himself in harm’s way. Not everyone wants to meet their murderer or the murderer of their best friend. Swings and roundabouts—like knitting or swimming the mile, running headfirst into a speeding bullet isn’t for everyone.

Still.

There’s something depressing about the fact that Akechi, a boy their age, their kind, is more of a mystery than the head of a Shibuya crime syndicate or the CEO of a corrupt international company. There’s something depressing about _Akechi_. Being the one who knew him best is a burden Ren was not prepared for, nor does he really feel qualified for it. And that doesn’t even answer the biggest question—

“So does this mean he’s alive?”

Don’t know. Couldn’t tell you. The answer, Morgana says, is yes—he thinks.

“You _think_?!”

Well, no one who’s dead has had a Palace before. And Shido’s Palace collapsed when he’d done that dead-not-dead thing ( _join the club_ , Ren thinks, not that he’d like to have anything in common with Masayoshi Shido nor let Akechi share in the same), and he’d clearly done so with intent, so the answer appeared to be—well, they’d find out. But the outlook was good.

“Good,” Haru murmurs. “Depending where you stand.”

Nobody answers this. Nobody feels they have the right to. Ren gets the feeling even Haru doesn’t know where she stands, and he doesn’t blame her.

Honestly, he doesn’t feel like he’s standing at all.

“So?” asks Ryuji to Ren, trying to exude bravado but looking about as tired as the rest of them. “What’re his keywords?”

_You could start with his name._

“I don’t know,” says Ren.

* * *

Akechi had been in Leblanc a lot, especially coming into late October-through-November. In the later days, though, Akechi had started to look a little more haggard when he’d pushed open the door. Not to anyone else. But Ren had a frame of reference they lacked.

He’d asked a few times if Akechi was okay, knowing full well he wasn’t. Or maybe hoping. Was that selfish?

Was that absurd? To wonder if it was selfish. To maybe hope that someone you liked and found interesting might be a little upset, discomfited perhaps, to be putting a pistol to your head and blowing your brains to the wall in a matter of days. Goodness, Ren—any more self-centred and you might start carrying a briefcase with your own initial on it, or something equally ridiculous.

“Oh yes, I’m fine,” Akechi always said, smiling at him. And then something like: “Thank you for asking, Amamiya-kun. It sometimes feels like you’re the only one who always looks out for me.”

Ren denied this.

“Oh, and Sae-san, of course,” Akechi would add, on prompting. “Still, I’m grateful for you. Least of all because you always tolerate my griping.”

He didn’t complain that much, actually, for how hard he worked.

“Haha. I’m glad you think so. It’s odd, the effect this place has on me. On the surface, it’s only a cafe, but it’s become a much-needed place of reprieve.” Another smile. “Perhaps that’s the effect of your company, Amamiya-kun.”

You can call me Ren. We’re teammates.

“Alright,” Akechi agreed. “Thank you, Ren.”

Sure.

Akechi always sighed when he finished his coffee. “Time to face the real world again, I suppose,” he’d say, and Ren would remind him that he was welcome to stay longer. “That’s very generous of you, but I mustn’t make excuses for myself. Self-discipline is so hard-won and slips away so easily. I’m afraid if I stayed a moment longer, I might never leave.”

That wouldn’t be so bad, Ren told him.

“You flatter me,” Akechi laughed. “Nevertheless, I must be going. Thank you as always, Ren, for these moments of calm, however brief.”

You’re welcome.

Ren watched him go, though he never left right away. He took his time gathering his things, then he’d stand for a moment at the door, looking outside, like he was surveying a warzone before leaping into the fray. He’d turn over his shoulder, a smile and a wave at Ren, and then he’d draw himself up and push the door open and step out at last.

It always felt like losing him to something much greater, in those moments.

* * *

“The world,” Ren says softly, and his phone confirms a match.

He’s out there in it, somewhere, right now. Alive and living in what Ren has to assume is some kind of personal hell.

“That arrogant bastard,” Ryuji rages. “Imagine thinkin’ the whole world is just up for grabs!”

Ren doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t counter the notion so well as seeing the thing itself, anyway.

* * *

“Hey, so,” and Ren looks up, because Ann is hovering over him, clearly looking for an invitation to sit. He scoots and she curls up against his shoulder. “Are you holding up okay?”

Ren nods.

“No, really,” she says softly. The others are sprawled in various states of disuse around the attic; Makoto is still murmuring sleepily into the Nav, trying to guess the last word, though they’ve all long since given up in reality. Joker’s the only one with a chance, they’ve known it from the start.

They look so tired. Ren feels so guilty. A good leader wouldn’t let his team do this. Feel this.

Ann’s eyes are so blue. So, so blue. She’s not at all like anyone he’s ever met, not only for the shade of her eyes but for their quality—so light, but so sharp and so clean, able without disguise to cut directly to the heart of him or to anyone like a sliver of clear sky through a waning rainstorm.

(The rainstorm, in this instance, is his self-sacrificial bullshit.)

“I’m okay,” he says. “Are you?”

She waves this off.

“So, I wanted to ask you,” she says. “What are you planning to do?”

“About…”

“Akechi,” Ann affirms, as always giving him no room to squirm away. “Are we gonna do his Palace?”

He blinks at her. This isn’t a question he expected. They’ve never come up against a Palace they didn’t traverse, or an evil they didn’t face, or—

“Someone we couldn’t save,” he murmurs.

She sighs. “I thought you’d say that.”

She’s right, of course, as she so often is. It needs to be unanimous. “We’ll put it to a vote once we get the keywords. Just like always.”

“Once _you_ get the keywords,” she corrects him. “This isn’t like always, Ren. You know it’s not.”

Yeah. He knows.

“We do this to save people,” she says. “But all the Palaces we’ve done so far were for us, too. Kamoshida was for Ryuji and me. Madarame was for Yusuke.”

“This is for Akechi,” says Ren.

“Isn’t it for you, too?”

“I don’t want—”

“It’s not selfish,” she assures him. “It’s a good thing. You saved us, Ren. All of us. But you don’t need to pretend you don’t have a stake in this. No matter how we feel about Akechi”—she glances at the others—"we’re not going to turn our backs on you now.”

* * *

Once, he’d asked to meet Ren at the TV station instead of at Leblanc or any of their usual haunts. “I’m sorry,” he’d laughed. “I didn’t think I’d be doing any more media appearances, but this interview request sounded interesting. I know it’s last minute.”

“It’s okay,” said Ren. “I’ll meet you outside?”

“You can come in. Tell them you’re here for me.”

But Ren hadn’t felt comfortable in the studio. There were lights and people everywhere, shouting and calling attention—far from ideal for a phantom thief. Far from ideal for a guy who’d become used to skulking just outside of notice anyway, both in the real world and out, lest he fail to escape the whispers. No one knew him here. But he was braced for accusations and sideways glances all the same.

Akechi found him tucked into a shadow, white-knuckled grip on his phone as he texted his location with more laser focus than _corner in b block_ warranted, and had to laugh even while he apologised. “I didn’t think I’d cause you this much anguish, Ren.”

“S’fine,” Ren mumbled. “Let’s go?”

They did, but Akechi clearly wasn’t ready to let it go. “Do you not like being in the studio?”

“It’s okay.”

“You looked like you wanted to sink into a puddle on the floor,” Akechi pointed out, and then took too much pleasure in Ren’s minute pout. “I suppose it’s not your kind of place.”

“Too many lights,” Ren murmured.

“That’s right, you’re a thief. I should have known—places like that are built on the spotlight, after all, and that means danger for you, doesn’t it?” Akechi chewed his lip thoughtfully. “It can be rather overwhelming if you’re not used to it.”

“You’re used to it, I guess.”

“Well, I have to be.” Akechi lined up the cue again. “But I suppose I wouldn’t have sought out my current work if I didn’t feel comfortable in the spotlight.”

“It suits you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Akechi smiled. He missed the shot. “Ah, that’s too bad. You must have distracted me, Ren.”

“Sorry.” Ren took the cue from him. “Maybe I stole your luck.”

The next shot does exactly what Ren wants it to. They watch Akechi’s target ball roll straight into the pocket.

“A thief to the end!” Akechi lamented, clapping Ren on the back. “It serves me right, I suppose, for dragging you into my own habitat.”

“You calling me a pest?” Ren grinned at him.

“A natural consequence, I’d say,” said Akechi, nudging his shoulder. “Give that back. It’s time for my redemption.”

Ren watched him line up another shot. There was always a grace to Akechi’s motion that Ren couldn’t quite master in the real world but recognised easily from the cognitive. An easy showmanship, a deliberate performance to every action: Akechi moved like he lived in the spotlight, even when the cameras were off.

With a tap of the cue, Akechi’s chosen ball ricocheted into another and sent them both into adjacent pockets.

“You’ve redeemed yourself,” said Ren, applauding. Akechi straightened up with a satisfied expression.

“Nice to know you haven’t stolen the title from me yet,” Akechi laughed. "Shall I buy you a drink to celebrate?”

* * *

“Theme park,” says Ryuji.

_Conditions have not been met._

“Battlefield,” suggests Makoto.

“Chessboard?” Ann tries.

“Arcade,” says Haru. "Forest.”

_Conditions have not been met._

There’s no rhyme or reason to any of these guesses—no pattern, no starting point, nothing like they’d had with any of the others. Department store. Limousine. Factory…

“Actual palace,” Ryuji snaps. "Heaven! Hell? The effin’ ocean! Space!”

“Theatre,” murmurs Ren.

_Candidate found_.

They all look at him.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Ann says admiringly, but a couple of his teammates are avoiding his gaze.

* * *

“Say,” Akechi said, legs crossed over and one hand idly stirring his straw through his drink. “If you keep spending so much time with me, won’t your friends get jealous?”

“You’re my friend too,” said Ren.

Akechi laughed and said, “Thank you,” which Ren thought was rather an odd thing to say.

* * *

“Shido hasn’t had his change of heart yet,” Yusuke says. “There’s no telling when that will happen.”

It’s nearing midnight. Ren’s phone is running down to zero but Ryuji’s using his charger and it’s Ann’s turn after that. It doesn’t matter. It’s only the Nav open, and surprisingly changing or saving or utterly ruining the heart of their dead-not-dead bastard ex-teammate-slash-friend-slash- _whatever_ doesn’t trickle down his phone battery as badly as Clipchat does. He is a different matter, but there’s no way to plug himself into the wall.

“Knowing our luck, it’ll be _on_ election day,” Futaba mutters.

But Morgana’s nodding. “It would be risky to take on another Palace so soon,” he says. "But I think that’s exactly why we have to do it now. We can’t afford to wait and see what happens with Shido. If we’re going to save Akechi, we have to do it now.”

“So…” Makoto ventures. “Are we going to do it?”

Normally this is when they’d all turn to Joker, but it seems they’re having a hard time looking at him. He hates it. This is his team. If they can’t meet his eyes, he’s failed them.

He can’t meet theirs, either.

It’s Haru who breaks the silence, to the surprise of them all. “I think we should do it,” she says.

In all the time they’ve known her, Ren’s never stopped marvelling at her voice. She talks like a little mouse. Sweet and lilting, a petal on the breeze, though it might slice your skin open if it got close enough. But grounded, light as it is, in something firm and unyielding. When Haru plants her roots, she can’t be rocked or blown over. All of 5’2” and fluffy as a cotton field. The shadow she casts over them at this moment is cowing.

“Why’s that?” asks Yusuke. “I would have thought you, of all of us, would have the strongest reason for objection.”

Haru shakes her head.

“I think I’ve learned a lot this year,” she says. “I don’t want to live a life for revenge like Akechi did. I want him to learn from what he did to me. To all of us.” She looks pained. “Saving him won’t bring my father back, but I think I’ll be more at peace if I know the heart that took him from me is in my hands. And I meant what I said,” she adds. “I don’t forgive him. But I understand him.”

“All for one, and all that crap,” Ryuji mutters, but flushes when everyone looks at him. “I mean, he wasn’t a Phantom Thief, but he _was_ one of us, kind of. We can’t just abandon him. He did save us, after all.”

Futaba hums.

“What’s up?” Morgana asks her.

“Just thinking,” she says. “If he’s alive, it means something happened in that engine room that I couldn’t figure out. Either something funky happened when the Palace collapsed, or he’s got a way to cloak himself from my sensors.”

Everyone digests this.

“But… why would he do that?” Ann asks.

Futaba shrugs. “Dunno,” she says offhandedly, but Ren doesn’t need the look she shoots him to let him know she’s not as undisturbed as she lets on.

“Well?” asks Makoto. “All in favour of infiltrating Akechi’s Palace?”

The vote is down to Ren, as always.

“Let’s do it,” he says.

* * *

“You’d do better if you played your sacrifices more effectively,” Akechi admonished, and took a step closer to yet another win.

Ren watched him curl his fingers around the black king in anticipation. “I don’t like making sacrifices.”

“That’ll be your downfall someday,” said Akechi. "But I can’t stop you from playing the hero, now, can I?”

He hummed thoughtfully, apparently mulling over his own words.

“Check,” he said. “Will you concede?”

“Never.”

Akechi clucked his tongue. “It’s only graceful to know when a concession is in order, you know,” he said. “Surely you must know as much—don’t you play shogi with Togo-san?”

Ren ducked his king behind another piece, which Akechi swiftly claimed.

“The outcome here is clear, Amamiya-kun,” he said softly.

* * *

Even within the clear walls of the Theatre’s enclosed balcony, all they can make out is the maw of voracious nothing tumbling from the exterior. The building itself is mostly glass, but they can’t see through it and the secrets within remain a mystery: there are lights shining off it from every which way—the effect is dazzling and renders the building inescapably opaque. But more dazzling still is the _scale_ of it.

“You weren’t kidding when you said ‘the world’, huh,” says Ryuji, awed.

What they’re perched on might equate to the rim of a floor standing globe, but from where they’re standing it looks more like a ring as of Saturn. The Theatre is not so much a building as it is a planet of its very own. There is no smooth horizon, no comfortable glow of atmosphere; only the glittering, jagged shape of an inversely silhouetted skyline—not as shadow against light but blinding white against yawning void. Roving spotlights arc out from somewhere at the northern pole, reaching forever into space. The far corners of the structure extend beyond what they can see but already they can hear the cacophony rising from its insides. It’s hard not to shrink back knowing what awaits them, what’s already inviting them in.

The lobby entrance looms taller than what they’d expected. The frame looks to be solid gold, the handles asscher cut crystal. It provides little shelter from the light, though the sound, at least, is mildly muffled by the slight overhang.

“Glitzy moron,” Futaba mutters.

“Shall we begin?” asks Haru.

Cymbals crash from somewhere deep inside the Theatre’s core, reverberating throughout the structure, and someone shrieks, though with terror or ecstasy it’s impossible to tell.

Joker looks up at the gilded doorframe. It’s a graceful arc, winking smartly in the light, but even from where he’s standing, he can see a patina of wear that no amount of polishing can hide.

“Do you think it’s real gold?” he murmurs.

“Does it matter?” Morgana asks him. “We’re not here to steal the doorframe.”

“Aren’t you gonna go crazy over it?” Ryuji snickers to affronted yowls.

The doorknob seems to reach for Joker’s outstretched hand, refracted light distorting and lengthening his gloves and blooming red eagerly from its own core. He touches it. It turns easily and the heavy door slides open as smoothly as if it had decided to open itself.

“Guess this is it,” he says, and inclines his head so the Thieves will follow.

“Welcome,” says a voice from the lobby, “to the Theatre.”

* * *

I won’t accept checkmate. Not until it’s truly over.

And when is it over, Joker?

When I say so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on twitter [@corviiid](https://twitter.com/corviiid).
> 
> title and summary poem from shakespeare's _as you like it_.  
> last line of summary absolutely ripped off _a christmas carol_ by one mister charles dickens.  
> i'm not that smart.
> 
> i would dearly love to give you a posting schedule for this thing but it would just be a clock face with no hands and instead of numbers it just says “please”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, here we go.
> 
> (the chapters won't all be this long i promise)

“Welcome,” says the figure once again. A Shadow, it seems, not unlike the attendants they’d become so familiar with in the Casino. A dark head with glowing eyes, tuxedo-clad and standing smart. It’s almost all black but for a clean white shirt-front under its jacket; it would be near impossible to see if not for the grandiose backdrop.

It doesn’t seem hostile—instead it regards them with a detached sort of weary grace, displaying no visible reaction to the team of seven wackily-dressed teenagers and their anthropomorphic cat who just stumbled into what looks like a _very_ high-end theatre lobby. Never mind that they’d all fallen into battle-ready stances at once. Ren thinks he might be feeling a little paranoid—tromping around in the heart of your almost-murderer might do that to a guy, he thinks—but something about this place unsettles him deeply. He wishes his mask were a little larger or wider-reaching. For some reason he can’t identify, he wants to conceal himself as much as possible. This to say nothing of the applause that fills the space—constant and unrelenting, if not actually loud, it hasn’t let up since they stepped inside, nor has it swelled. It doesn’t seem to be in reaction to anything, just another strange feature of the Palace. It’s grating at best and incites a growing anxiety deep in Ren’s gut, rising like bile.

“Really didn’t skimp on the red velvet, huh,” Ann mutters.

Understated, like the lobby is not. Anything that isn’t red is gold, and anything that’s neither is a brilliant crystal to match the exterior. Grand staircases arch and swirl above them to a point so far up it fades to a horizonal glow; looking up at the exterior from the balcony had given them a sense of the Palace’s scale, but trying to see the building’s ceiling from here gives them vertigo. Still more staircases lead down and further down into what seems to be the Theatre’s southern hemisphere. The stairs, like most everything in the lobby, are carpeted in the same deep, rich red as the wine being toted past them on gleaming trays. Ryuji reaches for a diamond glass and Makoto slaps his hand away. The serving Shadow glides off, near-invisible once again.

In here, the light is less all-consuming, aided by the fact that they can finally see where it comes from. Chandeliers hang from indiscernible high places, sending winking spots of light around the lobby from faux candles. The front of the lobby consists of that familiar glass, but the rest of it boasts more solid walls, dripping in the same red and adorned with chandelier-reminiscent lamps.

The room bleeds excess and whispers sickening grandeur in their ears in time with the applause. Ren feels he shouldn’t breathe in case he can’t afford the dust, which is surely made of ground diamonds. But—

“Don’t touch!”

Ann’s already wrenching her hand away from one of the flickering lamps on the wall, but it’s too late—the delicate crystals are cracking away and making tiny tinkling _crash_ sounds on the floor. The glass of the bulb itself has shattered beyond repair.

“I didn’t mean to!” she squeaks. “It was just—pretty—” She hovers anxiously over the shards, waving her hands over them like she might magic it back to life.

But Yusuke is frowning at the remnants of the actual lamp. “The gold flaked away,” he observes.

When Ren squints at it, he sees that Yusuke is right. Under the elegant gold—or so they’d thought it was—it looks like it might actually be plastic, or something similarly cheap. Ann raises her gloves; the gold leaf has attached itself to her fingers.

The Shadow who’d cried out to them sighs.

“I’m so sorry,” Makoto apologises. “We’ll, um… replace it?”

“Idiot!” Ryuji hisses. “How the hell are we gonna do that?!”

“It’s no trouble,” the Shadow says. He waves a hand idly; two serving Shadows deposit their trays and glide over at once to take care of the mess. A third replaces the lamp with an identical one. Ren looks at it more closely this time and thinks he sees the seam of the plastic down the middle.

“So,” says Yusuke. “Nothing in here is real, after all.”

The Shadow clears its throat.

“Welcome to the Theatre,” it says.

“Yeah, you said that already,” Ryuji snaps.

“We trust you will enjoy your time with us tonight,” the Shadow continues, like no one had spoken. “Will it be the usual?”

“The usual?” asks Futaba.

“You must be mistaken,” says Haru. “We’ve never been here before.”

The Shadow consults a clipboard that none of them had noticed.

“No,” he says politely, again with the gentle weariness of one who’s made this same correction many times before. “Most will find they have attended the Theatre at one or another time. It appears several among you have been patrons here since”—it consults again—“June.”

“June,” Ann murmurs. “That’s when we met Akechi, isn’t it?”

The Shadow looks pleased. “Then you _are_ acquainted with the Master,” he says. “Lovely. I shall ask again, then. Will it be the usual?”

The Thieves look at each other.

“Um,” says Makoto tentatively. “Sorry to be… ignorant… but what is the usual, exactly?”

The Shadow says something to her, but Ren’s stopped listening—his ears are ringing and it’s becoming harder and harder to resist the urge to crumple into a ball and cover himself with his coat. His fingers are twitching toward his pockets, where he has a dozen Covertisers at the ready—but he doesn’t _need_ them yet, they’ve barely gone anywhere—and this Shadow isn’t hostile, so _why_ —

“Joker?” Ryuji prompts, and Ren shakes his head quickly to clear it. It doesn’t work. “Hey, you okay, man?”

“I,” says Ren. His voice doesn’t sound like his own, or rather it doesn’t sound like Joker’s. Joker is suave and smooth and confident, but this voice sounds like it’s being ripped from him, all jerky and rough and uncertain. He clears his throat. “I don’t—like this.”

Suddenly all the little lights winking at him around the lobby feel an awful lot like eyes, thousands of them, _millions_ of them, and _that’s_ it—the crawling sensation of being watched from all angles. If there’s any feeling in the world that Ren knows it’s this, and it’s growing stronger every moment. He’s itching to douse himself in the Covertiser though he knows it’ll do him no good, but he’s sure of it now—

“The security level,” he says haltingly.

“Huh?” says Morgana. “But it hasn’t risen yet. We haven’t met any Shadows except this guy, and he’s not even fighting us.”

“Fighting is prohibited in the lobby,” the Shadow agrees blandly.

But this doesn’t reassure Ren. He shakes his head. “No, not the Palace. It’s—” Suddenly his hand is on his chest, clutching at his heart.

“Joker?” Ann asks, alarmed.

“Fine,” he chokes out. Isn’t that a nice relative term. He’s fine, yes, alive and breathing, but the paranoia is growing unbearable and he feels like he’s suffocating. It’s not the Palace’s security level he’s worried about—all of a sudden he’s deeply, painfully aware of his own heart, his own mind, like he’s been caught prowling in his own psyche, chased by millions of roving eyes that won’t let up—

“Joker’s right,” Futaba says suddenly. “I don’t like this. I don’t think I have it as bad as him, but there’s something weird about this place. It’s like I’ve tripped some kind of alarm in my own head. I can’t relax.”

“I do kind of feel like I’m being watched,” Ann admits.

Haru shudders. “I thought I was just being paranoid. It feels like everything I do is up on display.”

They all look warily around the lobby, Ryuji with one protective hand on Ren’s shoulder. He appreciates it. Without something to ground him, he feels like he might disintegrate.

The Shadow stands impassively by, waiting for them to be done.

“Let’s get out of here,” Futaba urges.

“Shall I reserve seats for you?” the Shadow suggests.

“You _shall_ eff off,” Ryuji snaps. “We don’t want any part of your weird freak theatre!”

“But there’s nowhere to go,” Haru frets. “What if this feeling persists throughout the whole Palace?”

“I really don’t wanna go back out there,” Ann says, wincing like she’s already anticipating the light.

“It looks like we don’t have a choice,” Morgana says. “We’ll have to try the stairs. Joker, are you gonna be okay until we can find a safe room?”

“Yeah,” says Ren automatically.

_Is_ he gonna be okay? What a funny question—he gets asked it every now and then, but he’s long since figured out the right answer. It’s been a long time since he’s actually _asked_ as much of himself, which, well. None of his confidants have revealed themselves as therapists yet, so.

“Where does this staircase lead?” Yusuke asks the Shadow, which thankfully does not seem miffed by Ryuji’s earlier rudeness.

“The Theatre consists of interconnected Wings,” the Shadow says. “The staircases will lead you through several of them. Would you like a map?”

“Thank you,” says Makoto, taking the map and squinting at it.

“What’s this at the end?” asks Yusuke, pointing at a vague shape at the top of the diagram.

“The VIP Box is located at the very top of the Theatre,” says the Shadow. “However, only the Master is permitted to enter.”

“Sounds like that’s where we’re headed,” Morgana says.

“No,” says the Shadow, looking distressed, or as distressed as a shadowy faceless blob can.

“So we have to climb all these stairs?” Ann asks. “There’s gotta be some safe rooms or something along the way… You said Wings, right?”

Ryuji growls. “What a pain… Joker, we gotta get a grappling hook or something so we don’t gotta keep doin’ this shit.”

Ren nods tightly, too pained to speak. “Let’s go,” he says.

The Shadow bows. “Please enjoy your stay.”

“Whatever,” Ryuji mutters, ushering Ren toward one of the swirling staircases. The metal railings are twisted into elaborate embellishments, but the gold here comes off too, leaving Yusuke’s glove a glittering mess. He rubs it distastefully off on Futaba’s suit and she tries to push him off the staircase.

“Look, but don’t touch,” Makoto murmurs, as they ascend.

* * *

The weather was cooler now than it had been in a long time, so Ren thought it an apt time to ask a long-standing question: “Do you always wear gloves?”

Akechi looked surprised, and he paused in the act of slipping his money back into his wallet. “Pardon?”

Ren gestured at his hands as Akechi moved aside to let him order. To the man at the counter, he said, “Peaches and cream, please.” To Akechi, he said, “You weren’t wearing them in summer.”

“Well, it would be odd to do so. They’re quite warm.” Akechi rubbed his fingers self-consciously along the back of one gloved hand. “I really can pay for you, you know. It’s impolite of me to invite you out and let you order separately.”

“It’s no trouble.” Akechi had tried to pay for him several times already, which was nice of him, obviously, but it always made Ren go somewhat warm in the face and lose several minutes afterward to being a bit flustered about it, though he didn’t know quite why. He _did_ know it was a waste of time, though, as those were minutes he could have spent talking to Akechi, instead. “Thank you,” he said to the counter, accepting his change and slipping it into his little coin-pouch.

“Why ask about my gloves?”

“Just curious.” Ren was curious about most things to do with Akechi. He was curious, for instance, about what Akechi carried around in that attaché case of his and where he’d gotten it emblazoned with his initial. About whether or not he actually wore lifts in his shoes like Ryuji had mutteringly accused him of once, bitter that he was apparently taller than both of them. About how he took his coffee when he wasn’t clearly trying to impress Sojiro, and where he’d bought the nice pen he used to sign autographs, and what exactly the scent was that had clung to Ren’s clothes for several hours the one time he had managed a particularly brilliant trick shot in pool and Akechi had gotten excited and actually flung an enthusiastic arm around him about it.

Some combination of expensive cologne… soap… shampoo… laundry detergent? Or did he get his clothes dry-cleaned?

Most of all, curious about why he cared so much about any of this at all. Haru had asked him about this once, and he’d provided no answer, because he couldn’t explain it himself. Something about Akechi intrigued him, like his soul itself was reaching out a hand from somewhere deep within himself quite aside from what he might have willed it to do.

“I’m just more comfortable with these on, I suppose,” Akechi said, raising a hand to consider his gloves. The stall owner handed him his crepe (strawberries this time—he ordered something different every time, or so he said, because why bog oneself down with repeated experiences when there was simply so much to explore?) and told Ren that his would be just a moment longer. “Oh, do you want to try some of mine?”

“It’s okay,” said Ren. If he shared in Akechi’s crepe, he would be expected to share in return, which might fluster him again.

“Oh, go on,” Akechi said merrily, all but shoving it in Ren’s face. Reluctantly, Ren took a bite.

“It’s good,” he said.

Akechi laughed. “You have whipped cream on your nose.”

Ren went cross-eyed for a moment while he tried to locate the offending blob, but Akechi laughed at him again and said, “Here,” before swiping it away. The cream was very bright against the matte leather of Akechi’s gloves, and it stood out even more when he stuck his finger in his mouth to rid himself of the evidence.

He looked very silly like that. “Aren’t your gloves dirty,” was the only thing Ren could think to say, which made Akechi pause again, and he extracted his finger looking slightly sheepish.

“Oops,” he said. “Pretend you didn’t see that, okay, Ren? It’s a bit childish of me, but I think it’s fun to eat with your hands. And… well, whipped cream is a guilty indulgence of mine.”

Privately, Ren had thought it was kind of endearing. “Cream and bacteria,” he said.

“Ha, I didn’t take you for a germaphobe, Ren.”

_Why do you say my name so much?_

“Peaches and cream,” said the vendor.

“Thank you,” said Ren.

Sure enough, before he could so much as appreciate the artistry of the crepe, Akechi’s hand had snaked out to take hold of his wrist, and Ren found himself with an faceful of Akechi’s hair as he ducked to take a bite out of Ren’s crepe.

“Hey,” he said, slightly indignant.

Akechi emerged, dabbing delicately at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “Fair’s fair,” he beamed. “It’s good. Thank you, Ren.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ren muttered, which unfortunately just made Akechi laugh more brightly. There was a distinct bite mark in the crepe now, which Ren looked a little forlornly at—no longer a simple peaches and cream flavoured crepe, it was now something Akechi had put his _mouth_ on. Ren didn’t believe in cooties, but something about that made him pause before he started eating again.

“Do you like them?” Akechi asked, some minutes later when they’d started walking.

“Crepes?”

“Oh—no, my gloves,” said Akechi. “Sorry, I forget you don’t automatically catch my train of thought. Talking to you is very refreshing, Ren. I don’t believe I’ve met anyone else who understands me quite as well as you do.” He smiled, entirely too fondly. “I suppose that’s why I’ve begun to expect that you read my mind.”

Ren raised his fingers and wiggled them at Akechi like he was telling a ghost story, which made him laugh. “They’re nice gloves,” he said. “They look soft.”

Without thinking, he reached to touch one—but at the same moment Akechi pulled his hand away to plop a straying strawberry back into the bed of cream. Ren drew back at once, but Akechi didn’t acknowledge the odd moment, or perhaps he hadn’t noticed it.

“They are quite soft. With use, perhaps. I’ve had them for quite a while now.” Akechi rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe I ought to get new ones, but unfortunately I’ve gotten attached.”

“You said you feel more comfortable with them on.”

“Yes—you do too, actually,” and Ren looked at him. “I mean, not these ones, obviously, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that little habit of yours.” Akechi tugged meaningfully on his gloves to adjust them. “You do it outside of that world, too, even when you’re not wearing any.”

Right. Ann and Futaba teased him about this constantly, but it still made him flush. Ren adjusted his glasses so he wouldn’t automatically grab at his wrist. “It’s—”

“Charming,” Akechi laughed. “If a little amusing. The lines do blur, I suppose—although you seem almost to be two different people with them on and off, Ren, in some ways if not others.”

“Do I?”

Akechi hummed thoughtfully. “At a glance,” he said. “There are things Joker does that I would never think of Ren doing. On the other hand, I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t see him in you quite clearly.”

_And you’d never do_ that _, of course._

“Perhaps I know you too well,” Akechi chuckled. “Or perhaps that’s wishful thinking. What do you think?”

“You could know me better,” Ren said, without thinking. There was plenty Akechi could know better about; for instance that the whole team was onto him, or for another instance that Ren thought his laugh was a bit cute, even if he laughed more than Ren was funny.

Akechi, however, seemed to take this as an invitation. “Well, I’ll look forward to more outings, then,” he smiled.

Ren looked at his shoes.

“Are you really taller than me?” he blurted, which startled Akechi into laughing harder than he had yet that afternoon. He did a funny sort of _squeak_ on the inhale when he laughed too hard and threw his head back to boot, which Ren thought was entirely unfair and should be considered some form of foul play.

* * *

The unsettling sensation of being put on display ebbs the higher they climb, much to everyone’s relief. Ren finds himself straightening up as they ascend, no longer needing the grounding (if slightly anxious) touches of his friends to stay upright. The applause has not subsided, but the overwhelming aura of the Theatre seems to extract its claws from his mind; he brushes hair out of his eyes and murmurs, “Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” Yusuke reassures him. “I found that place deeply unsettling also.”

“Looks like it only has that effect in the lobby,” Futaba reports, squinting at her heads-up display. “There’s these other sections of the Palace, though. I don’t have a solid reading on them yet.”

“Will it be worse in there?” Haru asks her anxiously, but Futaba shakes her head.

“There’ll be other weirdo stuff, that’s for sure,” she says, “but I don’t think it’ll be the _same_ stuff.”

“Hey, Joker, why’d it get to you so bad?” asks Ryuji, but Ren can only shake his head—if Akechi were here, he’d probably say something like _I have a few theories on the matter_ and then spout off on something that the others only partly listen to, but Ren isn’t a detective. With the panic only now beginning to creep from his brain like a reluctantly abating fog, he mostly feels like a slug.

They reach the landing and stop, because the other side of the staircase actually starts to wind back _down_ again. Morgana wrinkles his nose. “Looks like we’ll have to find another way up,” he says.

They all glance upwards. The Theatre is larger than they can get their heads around, but Ren has the vague impression that the upper hemisphere is very roughly domed. They can see more staircases sidling up toward the top of the Theatre, but those staircases evidently don’t begin from where they’re standing now.

Makoto glances around. “It looks like this is some sort of balcony,” she observes. “There’s a door there—do you want to check it out?”

There’s nowhere else to go, so they troop toward the door in a straggly little group. Ren feels a bitter, stabbing resentment that even here, in some perverse construction of a theatre manifested by a particularly fucked-up companion's brain, the opulence of his surroundings make him feel very strongly like he doesn’t belong. Stoic, fearless Joker, stalking the halls of Shujin amid the reaching whispers and sharded looks, unaffected, like the dauntless hero he is. He still expects to be thrown out of every institution he steps into. He wants to slink into every semblance of a shadow, install eyes along the curve of his back. It’s him, did you see him? That good-for-nothing delinquent—what does he think he’s doing here, in a place like this?

(He’s with me, Akechi had said that time at the TV station, once or twice, which had made Ren feel equal parts annoyed embarrassed relieved and mildly pleased.)

Another Shadow greets them at the door. This one is dressed a little differently to the host who had greeted them at the door—his suit is a little brighter, extravagant in a slightly goofy way. The doorway seems to match him, adorned with a colourful marquee not unlike that of a circus tent. The doors themselves, red to match their surroundings but a little more garish, look like curtains to be pulled aside. When Ryuji pokes one in an apparent inability to resist, though, they don’t give way. Just another illusion.

“Welcome to the puppet show,” the Shadow says. “Will you be joining us this evening?”

“Puppet show?” asks Ann, at the same time as Ryuji snaps, “Just tell us how to go up, damn it!”

The Shadow doesn’t flinch. “The higher Wings of the Theatre may be accessed through this Wing, if you so desire. Will you be joining us this evening?”

“That doesn’t make any effin’ sense,” Ryuji moans. “What kind of theatre only lets you into the rest of it if you go through _this_ bit?”

“ _None_ of this makes sense,” Morgana sighs. “We’d better just get used to it.”

“I guess it kind of makes sense,” Makoto ventures. “It’s not like all the different sides of Akechi are available to everyone, right…? I assume that’s what all this is about.”

“True… but why restrict them arbitrarily?” Yusuke asks.

There’s a pause.

“I think he’s just difficult,” Futaba decides, to murmured assent.

“Will you be joining us this evening?” the Shadow repeats blandly.

“Yeah, sure, whatever, you weird Shadowy freak,” says Ryuji. “Let’s go see a puppet show, I guess.”

“With our very special guest,” Futaba mutters, “emotional turmoil. Yaaaaaay.”

“Wonderful,” says the Shadow, not sounding like he gives a single shit about how _wonderful_ any of this is. “May I see your tickets?”

They all look at him.

“Your tickets,” the Shadow says again.

Ann breaks the silence with a very nervous high-pitched giggle. “Ohhh, nooooo,” she says. “I gueeeess I must have _forgot_ my ticket! Heh, ehehe… Won’t you let me in without it? Pleeeeease?” She bats her eyes.

“Kill me,” Ryuji whispers to Ren, who snorts.

Ann elbows Makoto hard in the ribs. “Oh,” Makoto wheezes. “U-uh, m-me too! I guess we… all forgot our tickets! Um… Could you let us in anyway?”

The Shadow looks on impassively.

“You will need tickets to enter,” he says.

“Figures,” Futaba mumbles.

“What are we going to do?” Haru frets. “There wasn’t anywhere to buy tickets downstairs, was there?”

“Don’t think so,” says Ryuji. “This ain’t gonna be one of those things where we gotta go do stuff in the real world, is it?”

“That would be a problem,” says Morgana. “I have no idea what this ‘puppet show’ could correspond to in the real world—do you, Joker?”

Ren shakes his head.

“Besides,” Morgana continues, “we don’t even know where Akechi _is_. I don’t think we can do anything to get in that we can’t do right here.”

Ryuji hefts his bat. “We could kill this guy,” he suggests.

“Please show me your tickets,” says the Shadow, looking mildly apprehensive.

“There’s no need for that,” says Makoto. She motions them all a little way away from the Shadow, who slumps a little when they walk out of earshot. “He doesn’t look like he’s guarding the door so much as he is just attending it, so one of us should be able to distract him easily. All we need to do is draw him away, that’s all.”

“So how’s the distraction gonna get in?” asks Morgana.

Makoto blanches. “Um,” she says. “Knock him over the head?”

“So it _does_ come down to beating him up!” Ryuji says, way too loudly. The Shadow looks over at them nervously.

“It’s fine,” says Ann. “We’ll just cause a commotion somewhere else in the Palace so he goes away. It’s worked before.”

“Yeah, but nothing about this Palace is anything like before,” Futaba mutters.

“It’s worth a try,” says Haru.

“I’ll cause the distraction,” says Morgana. “It’ll be easiest for me to get back unnoticed. Just make sure you keep the door open!”

“We won’t leave you behind,” Ren promises.

Morgana eyes him. “You saying that definitely makes it more suspicious.”

“Just go!” Ryuji urges. “We ain’t got time to be standing around like this!”

“Alright, alright! I didn’t see you volunteering any bright ideas, Skull,” Morgana complains, but scurries off. A minute later they hear a crash and a yowl.

“Oh, no!” Ann shrills, glancing at the Shadow. “That sounded like trouble! Someone should go check it out!”

“Dude, quit it!” Ryuji hisses. “Your bad acting’s gonna give us away!”

“ _He-ey_ —”

“Be quiet,” Makoto whispers. “He’s going!”

Ren waits for the Shadow to turn the corner and then pulls open the door as quietly as he can, gesturing them all inside. Futaba pauses on her way in and says, “You ever worry what’s gonna happen one day when our bad JRPG plans stop working like they should have six Palaces ago?”

“Too often,” Ren says grimly, and nudges her inside.

A black blur races back around the corner and in through the doorway. Ren closes the door again.

He turns around to find all the Thieves listening at the other door in a highly conspicuous manner.

“Are we safe?” Ann whispers.

Ren stares at them. “Get away from the door,” he says, which they do sheepishly.

“I really hope we don’t have to go through this every time,” Makoto sighs.

“Seriously,” says Ryuji. “Leave it to effin’ Akechi to need _tickets_ to get into his _head_.”

The space they’re standing in is much smaller than the Lobby—almost cosy, really, after the grandeur of the rest of the building, and actually almost tacky. Brighter, bolder colours and a distinctly constructed look to the décor. The applause is louder now than it was outside, and now it’s interspersed with cheering and the occasional spurt of raucous laughter.

“Creepy,” mutters Ryuji, and Futaba nods fervently. The applause doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere, or at least they can’t _tell_ what the source is. It’s simply omnipresent, like the lights outside.

At least the unsettling sensation of being watched hasn’t followed them in here. Ren presses two fingers to his temple; his third eye feels blurry in here, like it might be underwater. It’s making out vague impressions of the noteworthy but he’s unable to discern anything with full clarity. Several glowing marks almost send him staggering, the starburst effect leaving spots on his field of view even after he’s blinked the supernatural vision away.

“You okay, Joker?” Morgana asks, and he nods. Akechi was at once unlike anyone he’d ever encountered and the only one who might have shared his soul; adjusting to him was a matter of easing oneself slowly into the shallow end and wading with apprehension. Diving straight into his heart like this was as jarring as a shock of cold water or a searchlight to the eyes. Once he adjusts, recalibrates, it will be easier to see.

The foyer consists of a manned reception desk and two sets of entryways—an impressive set of double doors set with lights that seems to lead into the performance area, and a simple door labelled BACKSTAGE in a far corner. Inevitably, Ren thinks tiredly, they’ll need to head backstage and go through a convoluted maze of impractical corridors and boxes, but he’d like to cover their bases first.

“Let’s check out the stage,” he says.

“Please enjoy the show,” says the Shadow at the desk, who until now none of them had realised could talk—and by the way Ryuji and Makoto jumped, who some of them hadn’t even realised was there.

“Thanks,” Ann says to it.

“Eff you,” Ryuji adds.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Haru protests, throwing the Shadow an apologetic face, which it does not acknowledge.

“Everything about this damn place creeps me out,” Ryuji mutters. “Let’s just go inside already.”

Inside, unfortunately, is not less creepy. It is much, much creepier.

“What the _fuck_ ,” says Ann, which gets them shushed by several intangible theatregoers. Ryuji swats ineffectually at them and passes straight through their heads. The noise in here is absolutely overwhelming; the applause is louder than ever, for one thing, which Ren had not thought possible, but it’s also accompanied by a lot of undistinguishable clamour which clouds his brain until he quite literally cannot hear himself think. It’s also completely dark all the way through the seating, though they can feel rather than see the vague shadows of ghostly audience members milling about between the rows.

The stage itself, by contrast, is dazzlingly bright and hurts their eyes to look at. Ren feels like letting his eyes adjust to the light will render them incapable of ever seeing anything ever again, but once he does he realises what Ann’s _what the fuck_ was in response to. And he kind of wants to echo it.

“Is that Akechi?” Haru says in a hushed voice.

Ren hopes it’s not. It would be really fucked up if it is.

“That’s him,” says Futaba, eyes shielded by her goggles. “That’s not a cognition. It’s definitely a Shadow.”

“Wait,” says Ryuji. “We’re runnin’ into his Shadow already?”

“Um,” says Futaba. “Well, it’s definitely him, and it’s definitely a Shadow, so… I guess so?”

“Something about this doesn’t seem right,” says Ann nervously.

“You can say that again,” Ryuji yelps, apparently finally adjusting to the light. “That’s an effin’ string puppet!”

Yeah. Really fucked up.

The seating area is large and the stage a decent distance away, but even with that and the ridiculous spotlights, they can see more of the marionette Akechi than they’d probably like to. Stood centre of the gaudy, almost circus-like stage. For one thing, it’s huge—maybe three or four times the size of a human being. It’s also gleaming, carefully polished and buffed, reflecting light more viciously in the areas where it seems the wood might be chipped or worn. The polish throws the lines of joints and pieces into sharp relief, giving the puppet the general impression of something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails. Behind it, mostly concealed by its limp bulk, is a door.

As they might have gleaned from the chatter of the audience, the show does not yet seem to have begun. As such, the puppet on stage is limp on its strings. Most disturbingly, it’s draped _backward_ , not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks.

They can just make out the side of the thing’s eyes from where they’re standing. Gravity has not been kind to them: the puppet’s eyelids are dropped open, bulging eyes left wide and staring up as far back as the build will let them. They haven’t rolled all the way into the wooden skull, presumably because they can’t. Instead, the unseeing yellow eyes remain fixed on the back corner of the stage. The puppet is entirely still.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Makoto says faintly.

“Yeah, that’s fucked,” says Futaba.

Yusuke is observing the puppet quietly, but without any of his usual detached scrutiny. His hands hang by his sides, framing nothing.

Ren touches his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes,” says Yusuke, slipping out of his reverie to turn his intent eyes on Ren. He looks downcast. “Thank you. It’s… not very pleasant to look at.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Morgana says. “There’s no way we can get to the stage through all this mess and I don’t like the idea of getting up on there without knowing what’s waiting for us. Unless—Joker, can you see anything in here?”

He’s already tried. “Nothing.” Not nothing. The stage is ringed by a deep pit and a barrier too unfriendly to climb. There’s a barricade of guards around the pit and the illusions milling through the seats are interspersed with real Shadows that could turn hostile any moment. No way through, no way over. He’s not leading his team into that, not when there’s always a back way.

And the Puppet, whose golden eyes bored deeper into him like it knew how closely it was being watched.

“Man, I hate this place,” Futaba growls.

“Let’s go,” says Haru, casting the stage another frightened look, and they all stumble blindly back toward the door and crowd out again.

Back in the foyer, Makoto slides wearily down the wall and rests her head on her knees. Ann squats beside her. “You good?”

“Yes,” says Makoto. “Sorry. That was just…”

“Yeah,” says Ryuji.

“We’ve seen a lot of disturbing stuff in Palaces,” says Ann. “But I mean… It’s kind of different, since this is _his_ Palace.” Someone they knew, if they didn’t really know. “It’s… kind of sad. And weird.”

“Was my Palace like this?” Futaba asks quietly. They all look at her in surprise, which makes her shrink. “I—I mean! Not—like _this_ , exactly, but…”

“Mostly it was just annoying,” says Ryuji. “I was like, ‘do you want us to help you or not?!’ Like, stop tryna to kill us, damn!”

“Ryuji!” Ann snaps, but Futaba’s grinning again and smacking Ryuji on the back, so Ren figures he doesn’t need to interfere.

“I didn’t expect Akechi’s Palace to be like this at all,” says Morgana. “I thought it would be something violent or vengeful.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Yusuke says slowly. “The deaths he caused aren’t at the centre of his distortion. It seems they’re more a result of… emptiness.”

“So what _is_ his distortion?” asks Ann, sitting down on the floor next to Makoto. “I mean, I know it’s a theatre, but I thought Palaces could only form from distorted _desires_. Is this all something Akechi wants…?”

“My Palace wasn’t really a desire,” says Futaba. “Just… a worldview.”

“I guess that’s true,” Ann says.

“It would appear that Akechi desires to be seen,” says Yusuke. “How confusing. This is all so melodramatic and artificial. Why would he want to be seen for everything he’s not?”

“Perhaps because he doesn’t like what he is,” Haru suggests.

Everyone looks at her. “You’re kidding,” says Ryuji. “I’ve _never_ met a guy who liked himself more than Akechi.”

“Everything he showed us was an act, though,” Ann muses. “The Akechi we saw in Shido’s boiler room didn’t seem to like himself all that much.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“If he really wanted to be seen like this, then why would his Shadow look like that?” Haru says, gesturing at the stage door. “Maybe his desires are in conflict.”

_Or it’s something he thinks he_ needs, _and that’s the distortion_. To voice or not to voice. Whether it’s stranger to Ren or to his friends how well he knows their would-be enemy/teammate—he knows not.

“A puppet show, huh,” Futaba muses, squatting down and curling up in a google-eyed ball beside Joker’s legs. Her text walls are scrolling, but he wonders if she’s really looking or just blocking herself from view. “Wonder why that’s the first wing we get to see.”

* * *

“You know,” said Ren. The café is warm around them, quiet but for the gentle whirr of the fridge and an occasional tap on the board between them. “I heard you were an excellent detective.”

“Is that so?”

“So someone said. But he hasn’t put his money where his mouth is yet.”

Akechi laughed. “Careful, Ren. You shouldn’t antagonise me when you’re already on the losing side.” He took another of Ren’s pieces seemingly without strategy, perhaps just to demonstrate that he could.

Ren took another step towards Akechi’s king. “Maybe that’s why I’m doing it.”

“Trying to throw off my game? You’ll have to do better than that.” Akechi dodged neatly aside. “Check.”

“What—oh,” said Ren, frowning at the board.

Akechi laughed again, more lightly. “You’ve improved,” he said with a tinge of pride. “But you haven’t surpassed me yet. Shall I take credit for being a good teacher?”

“Take credit when I win,” said Ren.

“I’ll never get it, then. So why are you goading me about my detective skills tonight?”

They had reached November, the early areas of Sae’s Palace no longer a mystery, but Ren knew there was still a long way to go. These days Akechi was in Leblanc almost every evening under the guise that they had strategy to discuss, but they usually just played chess and carried on infuriatingly obfuscating conversations like this one. The official excuse Ren had given Morgana was that one must keep one’s enemies close; the real reason, and the reason why he’d told Morgana not to tell any of the others that the meetings were happening (bar Futaba, whom he couldn’t keep this from), was only a little further from that truth. The better he understood Akechi, the more he felt Akechi was not the enemy—and the better chance he might have of convincing Akechi of the same.

And… well, he couldn’t _not_ enjoy Akechi’s company. There was a spark in it he couldn’t find anywhere else.

“I seem to recall,” Ren said, “a certain detective prince promised me he’d catch the culprit. I’ve been looking forward to it like he told me to, but he hasn’t delivered yet.” He smirked at Akechi, who was already pouting at him. “Maybe he’s not as good as he thinks he is—what do you think?”

“You wound me,” said Akechi, indeed looking deeply injured. “If you’re going to hold me to such a high standard, then you must have some equally impressive theories to offer me.”

“You first.”

“Cop-out,” said Akechi.

“Poser,” Ren shot back.

Akechi shook his head, smiling. “Well, alright,” he said, “if you’ll have my half-baked musings, I’m happy to share them.”

“Please,” said Ren.

This was dangerous territory. If Akechi insisted on hearing his thoughts in return, he’d have to make sure he didn’t let anything slip about what he actually knew—it would undo everything they’d worked for.

(Which, privately, Ren thought might not be so bad, but even in his resentment of the Plan he’d yet to come up with an alternative, unless of course Akechi turned over a new leaf overnight.)

His best bet would be to play dumb, which he was pretty good at. Sorry, Akechi, but I really don’t know anything. There’s a reason you’re the detective between us. (Ah, but Amamiya-kun, I’m sure you have something interesting to add—you always do, after all—)

He couldn’t quite bring himself to commit to the act, though. It was funny; Akechi was the least honest person he’d ever met and in so being forced Ren to mirror him when they spoke, but every single time he found himself in close proximity to Akechi’s smiling, painted face, he felt something flare to life deep within himself that seemed to call out to something akin in Akechi. It felt almost like another Persona, or some other supernatural power of the heart. _Maybe you just have a crush_. Well, there was that, but there was also something else that seemed much more—wait, what?

Akechi was still talking. Twist my arm, Amamiya-kun, you know I hate showing off for hours about all my opinions _—_ “I’ve already told you some of my thoughts, of course. I believe the psychotic breakdowns cannot be the work of one person alone. Most likely there is an actor and an instigator, of sorts, and the latter is almost definitely the one running the operation.”

“So you think it’s a hitman?”

“It must be,” said Akechi. “Think about it, would you? The black-masked man I saw in Okumura’s Spaceport was about our age, if a little older. Certainly not a fully grown adult. What possible motive could someone our age have for causing mass hysteria? Certainly there’s no personal benefit to be reaped, so why do it?”

“A hitman our age is a little scary,” said Ren.

“I suppose so,” Akechi mused. “But a group of heart-altering teen vigilantes might be equally scary to the public, don’t you think?”

“It’s not really on the same level,” said Ren. “But I see what you mean.” A thought occurred to him. “Why not think about what drives _us_ , then? If we’re the same age as him, I mean.”

“Ah, so as to isolate his motive by analogy?” Akechi hummed. “Interesting perspective. But do you think the hitman is doing this for social reform, as you are?”

“No,” said Ren.

“My thoughts exactly,” Akechi said. “The psychotic breakdowns don’t seem to follow any pattern or rationale. Nothing comes of them but destruction. The targets are average, ordinary people, and the victims are innocents. So why bother? What possible motive could this person have?”

The chessboard lay forgotten between them, one white pawn mere steps from victory.

“So let’s consider it from a different angle,” said Akechi. “Let’s not focus on the victims, but on the greater social impact. The train accident, for instance, the one from a few months back. Was the culprit targeting the people on the train? Or was the true target someone else?”

“The impact?” Ren repeated.

“Did you watch the news that day, Ren?” Akechi asked.

“Yes,” said Ren. “It was mostly about the engineer. But they mentioned the tracks were deteriorated too, or something.”

Akechi nodded. “Very good. You pay attention. The deterioration of the tracks was reported six months before the accident, but the railway company and the Ministry of Transport did nothing when it first became an issue. They copped a lot of heat in the media after the accident. The engineer’s breakdown was what caused the crash, but it certainly served to highlight a lot of existing issues the current government had been ignoring.” He sipped his cooling coffee. “Of course, there may be more to it than that, but as to the ugly depths of the political world… well, I’m really not qualified to speculate much on the specifics.”

“So you think the hitman has a political motive?”

“Almost, but not quite,” said Akechi. “Again, the hitman is someone our age.” He smiled suddenly. “Do you have political ambitions, Ren? I know you enjoy spending time with Yoshida-san, but we’re a little too young to enter the political world right now.”

“Never,” said Ren, firmly.

Akechi laughed. “Fair enough. I’m quite the same. So I’ll ask you this: why would someone our age bother manipulating the political scene? It doesn’t seem to be an endorsement of any particular _ideal_ —only smearing the name of specific people, departments, and other significant entities. This isn’t a matter of values, but of reputation. Someone stands to gain from this, but it can’t be our masked man. Who is it?”

“It must be a politician,” said Ren.

Akechi nodded. “That’s what I think, too.”

“So…” Ren struggled to absorb what Akechi was telling him. Why _was_ Akechi telling him all this? A red herring? Or… “Some corrupt politician hired a teenage hitman to do his dirty work. That’s your theory?”

“About the long and short of it, yes,” Akechi said cheerfully.

“That’s awful,” said Ren.

“Politics often is,” said Akechi, examining his nails.

“That doesn’t answer something big,” said Ren, mildly disturbed by the dismissiveness with which Akechi spoke of the matter. “Why?”

“Why what? You can’t be surprised that a corrupt person in power might resort to such means to gain more.”

“Why would someone our age agree to do something like that?” said Ren.

Akechi paused.

“That much,” he said lightly, “I’m afraid I haven’t been able to deduce.”

Ren looked at the floor.

Akechi picked up his own king and turned it over in his hands.

“Bit of a brutal game, chess,” he said. “You really would do better to sacrifice a few more of your pieces, you know.”

“I don’t like making sacrifices.”

“So you’ve said. Almost foolishly sentimental, given they’re only bits of wood and the sacrifices are symbolic,” Akechi smiled. “But there’s something to respect about that. Perhaps you give it more thought than the average person, Ren. You’ve realised how disturbing it is that you must build an army around one man and expect them all to lay down their lives for his protection.”

Ren said nothing, merely watched him. Akechi seemed lost in thought.

“He doesn’t even do anything,” Akechi murmured, looking at the king. “The game is built around him, ends when he does, but it’s the others that actually play. Without them, he’s nothing. But if he orders them to die, they must die. It’s like they don’t have a reason to exist without him.”

“It’s just a game,” said Ren.

“Yes,” said Akechi, finally returning his gaze. “You’re right. I’m overthinking again. It’s a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid.”

“I like it,” said Ren. “I think it’s interesting.”

“Well, thank you,” said Akechi, eyes shining. “Then I guess I can admit that I sort of like it, too.”

* * *

“Well, we are _not_ goin’ back in there,” Ryuji says firmly. “So we’re gonna have to find another way around. Whaddaya think, Leader?”

“Let’s try backstage,” Ren says heavily. Just once, he’d like for his instincts to be wrong, but after seven Palaces he knows the drill. The long, tiring, often pointless-feeling drill. Being a Phantom Thief is sexy and stylish until it’s not. Sometimes he has to fight down the urge to scream in frustration whenever he sees a _corridor_ , which is kind of inconvenient considering he goes to a fucking high school.

“You cannot enter the backstage,” says the Shadow, making them all jump again. “Authorised personnel only.”

“Yeah, let’s go backstage,” says Ryuji to the others.

“No,” says the Shadow.

Makoto and Ann get up to follow as the others begin to head backstage.

Suddenly Futaba gasps and stumbles backward into Yusuke, and a split second later they all have to stop, because the Shadow behind the desk is suddenly very much in front of them and blocking the door.

“Authorised personnel only,” it says.

“Dude,” says Ryuji.

It doesn’t move.

“This is just like Minecraft,” says Futaba.

“Get out of our way,” Ren tells it. He’s got his knife in his hand, spinning it more out of habit than anything else in a way that always makes Ann take a nervous step away from him because _that’s freaky Joker stop showing off you’re gonna cut off your hand_ , but the Shadow doesn’t even look at it.

“You cannot enter,” it says.

“Let’s just push past him,” says Morgana, but doesn’t make a move, and neither do the rest of them. This Shadow, much like the two they met outside, does not seem hostile; it’s not armed, and it’s gazing wearily at them without raising a single alarm. But when Ren tries to shift into a battle stance, it just feels… wrong. The Shadow doesn’t react. It just gazes right back at him and doesn’t move.

“Call his bluff,” Morgana urges, hiding behind his leg.

Joker straightens up. “Stand down,” he says to the others, who shuffle back in some relief.

“That sucked,” Futaba complained. “He wasn’t even gonna fight back!”

“Yeah,” said Ann. “I didn’t wanna kill him, either.”

The Shadow is still standing by the door, completely expressionless. It doesn’t look innocent, exactly, just tired. They’ve killed hundreds of Shadows, maybe thousands. And Ren isn’t naïve enough to think that his morals have only just now kicked in. But something about the concept of fighting this Shadow makes him uncomfortable.

“Now we’ll have to find another way in,” says Morgana.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” says Yusuke, staring at something else.

“What is it, Fox?” asks Ann.

Yusuke frames a portion of the wall with his fingers, which is helpful to nobody but him. “Do you see that dip in the wall there, beyond the ledge? The wallpaper looks uneven.”

“You dragged us away to complain about the wallpaper?!” Ryuji demands. “…Well, fair enough. Akechi’s taste is ass.”

Yusuke shakes his head. “I mean, I think there’s a break in the wall. A vent, perhaps.”

“One day,” says Futaba, “we’ll go into a Palace that doesn’t have convenient vents everywhere for no reason, and then where will we be?”

“We’ll think about that when we get to it,” Morgana says, eyes gleaming. “Let’s get into that vent!”

“Hold on,” says Ann. “That guy’s gonna see us if we go from here. We need to distract him somehow.”

“Not this again…” Makoto sighs.

“Nah, look at him,” says Futaba. “Here, check this out. Hey, dude!”

“Yes,” says the Shadow.

Futaba holds up her hands. “We’re not gonna try and get into that door anymore. Promise.”

The Shadow nods. “Please enjoy the show,” it says, and then it’s back behind the desk.

“Uh,” says Ryuji.

“Wow,” says Ann.

Futaba makes an ominous cackling noise. “They’re Shadows, but they sure behave like cognitions, right?” she says. “Maybe Crow thinks everyone else is too stupid to question his shit. Or maybe all his brain cells just have one purpose each. Who knows? But you have to admit, the Shadows we’ve met so far are totally way simpler than any of the other ones we’ve dealt with. This’ll be a breeze.”

Simpler? Ren frowns behind his mask. They did seem simple, but there was something… “They look tired,” he offers.

“Hey, you’re right,” says Ann. “Usually the Shadows we meet are all like, ‘RAAH I’LL KILL FOR THE MASTER, BWAAAAAH’ but these guys just kind of look done with it all.”

“Bwaah,” Yusuke repeats thoughtfully.

“This theatre does look like it requires a lot of upkeep,” Haru says. “Putting on a show that never stops surely must take its toll on a person’s psyche.”

“Kind of weird that that leeches into the Shadows, though,” says Morgana. “Usually Shadows aren’t actually part of the Palace, they’re just drawn to it.”

“Yeah, but remember the Casino? That one had attendant Shadows too, and they were way different than the normal guards and things,” says Futaba.

“I give up,” Ann complains, to tired acquiescence. “I don’t get any of this. Let’s just go.”

Joker hauls himself to the ledge and gives the others a hand up after him before clambering into the vent. It’s narrower than they’re used to.

“Hey, Joker,” says Ryuji, squished up behind him in the cramped vent. “How come Fox caught this thing before you did? Don’t you have that freaky sixth sense in here?”

Futaba pipes up before Ren can answer, which is good, because he can’t actually figure out how to. “I’ve been wondering about that too. I can scan the place like normal, but it kinda feels like I’m not catching everything in here, like I’m being blocked. Seems like this Palace has some kind of internal cloaking device. I’m guessing Joker’s third eye is the same deal.”

Ren nods, though no one can see him in the vent.

“What a pain,” Ann sighs. “As if this needed to be any harder than it already is.”

“Seriously,” grumbles Ryuji. “Effin’ Akechi, bein’ all _special_ and shit.”

* * *

Well. I do hope I’m not being a bother.

No, of course not.

Are you sure? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any other customer remain past closing.

You’re not any other customer.

Am I special, then?

Maybe.

Mm, you flatter me.

Because you won’t stop fishing for it.

Haha. So insolent today. Nevertheless, I won’t pretend I’m not pleased to stand out in your eyes. You certainly do in mine.

…You talk too much.

My, are you flustered?

I’m trying to make my move.

…

In chess.

I know, Ren. Did you think my mind was elsewhere?

Just stop talking. Check.

Very nice. Check.

What?!

It seems we’re evenly matched. An honour I won’t take lightly, I assure you. Shall we suspend our game for the night? I ought to be going.

Running? You afraid I’ll win?

No chance of that, but it’s cute you think you have a chance. No, I suppose I just like the idea of leaving our match in a deadlock of sorts. …That, and the last train leaves in a few minutes.

Ah… We lost track of time.

I don’t much fancy cycling home at this time, I’m afraid. I’ll seek out your company again sometime soon, Ren.

I’ll look forward to it.

* * *

“Is there a safe room nearby?” Futaba asks suddenly, as Joker smoothly dispatches the last Rangda with a flick of his dagger.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Ann says, flinging herself at the door. “I’m soo tired. This place just doesn’t let up…”

“Wait,” says Ren.

Safe rooms… He hadn’t considered the implications of that yet. In a Palace like this, where would Akechi’s distortion be weakest?

He calls out too late. Ann’s already pushing open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have several chapters actually written but i have been refraining from posting them too quickly because after i run out it'll take ages to update again so... a snail's pace from the beginning it is! my sincerest apologies!! i have deadlines and also i am slow is the thing but i got tired of staring at this one editing and re-editing so i hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/corviiid)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience :]

Akechi’s Palace, much like Akechi himself, seems intent on reminding them of its own uniqueness every chance it gets. The dressing room shimmers once into an unfamiliar space filled with unfamiliar furniture, and then it stays there, and moves no more.

“Is this… his bedroom?” Yusuke murmurs.

“Must be,” Ann says. “Man, this is really weird. Usually we can’t see past the distortion at all. But I can totally see what his apartment looks like.”

“Ain’t that good?” asks Ryuji. “That means the distortion’s real weak here, right?”

“It depends,” says Morgana. “I don’t think we know enough about this Palace yet to really determine what it means. It might mean he has an undistorted view of the place he lives, or… it could mean he doesn’t see a difference between the distortion and the real world.”

“I see Featherman!” Futaba yelps, pointing frantically at a neat shelf of figurines by Akechi’s bed.

Ren’s never been to Akechi’s apartment. Akechi had never invited him, and he’d never asked. It felt like a breach of some too-far line—knowing something of Akechi he wasn’t welcome to know.

It had hurt, after. Wondering if there’d been some secret way closer to that line, so it would no longer feel so unreachable.

Looking around now, Ren can’t help but feel like he shouldn’t be here. It was like breaking into someone’s house… an odd hang-up for a thief, perhaps. But it was different, because Ren had _known_ him. More different still, actually, because he hadn’t.

Akechi’s bedroom is cold, colder than the attic, cold even for December. Ren doesn’t know what he was expecting. A lavish suite? A concrete box? The physical manifestation of every philosophy text Akechi had ever quoted at him? But it’s just a bedroom. The bed against the wall, a single but roomy enough. Coated with too-large, too-plush comforters and soft covers. It looks like he’s built himself a small burrow to nestle into at night.

In the corner sits his desk, classy and sleek and simple but for its layering of loose objects and paper scraps. Several cup ramen lids leaf its surface. Any otherwise unoccupied space houses a glass or a plastic bottle. Sticky notes litter the wall, covered in a frantic scrawl that only resembles Akechi’s usual elegant chaos in passing, that Ren recognises only from experience.

* * *

“I can’t even read this,” Ren said, waving the crossword puzzle at him. “Your handwriting is terrible.”

“Hey,” Akechi complained, snatching it from him. “You caught me on a particularly frazzling day, Ren. Look—” and he flipped the pages back a few to show Ren a puzzle from a few visits ago. It was neater—well, no, actually, it was about as hard to read as the most recent one, but the script was prettier and more even than the chicken scratch.

“I still can’t read it,” Ren proclaimed.

“Your lack of literacy hardly sounds like my problem,” Akechi huffed, smacking him good-naturedly with the book. “Fine, then. I’ll prove myself if you insist on goading me.” He turned back to the current page and carefully wrote out Ren’s name in neat, clean writing in the top left corner. “There, you see?”

“Why don’t you do that all the time?” Ren prodded.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Akechi sighed. “It takes too much time. I can never keep up with the pace of my thoughts, so it just becomes a scrawl. I’d rather type.”

Ren took the pen from Akechi’s hand and printed ‘AKECHI GORO’ under his own name. The book was still facing Akechi, so it wound up upside down on the page.

“Like our names are facing each other,” Akechi laughed. “How fitting. I can read your name, but not my own.”

“It’s just a scribble. No need to overthink it.”

“I’d rather fixate on the symbolism of the thing than acknowledge your attempt to one-up my handwriting, Amamiya-kun.”

“Do you like it?” Ren asked him, smug.

“It’s neat,” Akechi said, closing his eyes and taking an imperious sip of his coffee. “Congratulations, I suppose. I’ll let you have this one thing over me, since you seem to need it so badly.”

Ren sighed and told him, “You look so nice, but you’re a total ass,” which made Akechi choke on his drink and cough it all over the page while he tried and failed not to laugh.

Later, watching Akechi mop up the spill and pout about Ren’s goading ( _when will you stop making a mess of my boss’s crossword book, Akechi-senpai?_ ), Ren wondered when his thoughts on Akechi Goro had become so fond.

* * *

“So in the Palace, this is a dressing room,” says Makoto. “That makes sense. If his distortion is that he can never stop performing, then the distortion must be weakest where he doesn’t have to perform to anyone.”

“A momentary respite,” Yusuke muses, “before one must return to the stage, and the show go on.”

“It’s hella messy,” Ryuji mutters. “Hell, I think it’s worse than my room.”

“Honestly,” says Ann. “I’d say that’s impossible, but this place is kind of a sty.”

“It’s surprising, isn’t it?” says Morgana. “He was always so prim and proper when he came to our place. I thought he’d be the neat and meticulous sort. Plus, he has so much stuff. It’s like Futaba’s room in here.”

“Hey!”

“It looks so lonely,” Haru murmurs, eyes sweeping the room.

None of the others have moved from the doorway. They’re all crowded around it still, observing the room with some trepidation like Akechi’s mostly-covered desk lamp might spring to life and bite them. Joker’s taken point as he always does, and while the rest of his team all look like they want to shrink back into the door he’s suppressing an urge to stride forward and explore; turn over every sheet of paper, examine the carefully arranged figurines on the shelf for price tags and dust, run a hand along the bedsheets and memorise their texture. He nudges a tentative hand against a sticky note on the wall and finds it goes right through; instead, he presses against a much colder surface, and the mirror of the dressing room vanity ripples into view around his glove. That’s right—Akechi’s Palace may deign to show them the reality behind the distortion, but this is still the cognitive world. Illusion remains king. Look, but don’t touch.

“Lonely?” Makoto asks Haru. “There’s so much in here. It’s more than well-populated with enough possessions for ten people.”

Haru just hums.

Ren remembers visiting her home once or twice. The estate was as lavish as he’d thought to expect. She walked straight past a litany of paintings so valuable that just looking at them made Ren’s head spin, didn’t so much as blink when she led him over a rug that definitely cost more than Ren’s life. He hadn’t even wanted to step on it lest he sully it with the filth of being human, but she’d assured him with a bit of bitterness that the decor had been the choice of her father’s assistants and she couldn’t give less of a shit about any of it.

(Which came with its own bitterness, Ren thought, considering how just one of the forks in Haru’s dining area probably could have paid for all Yusuke’s meals for a good few months.)

Haru’s bedroom was very classy, which was the best and possibly only word Ren could think to describe it, because it did not speak remotely to the sort of person she was, nor did it reflect at all the life and spirit he saw when he looked at her. Even the tea sets, which Ren knew she loved to use, seemed only to be _pretty_ and nothing really more than that. Sitting alone in the glass cabinet on careful, pristine display, alongside the silky blue sheets that were so perfectly made it looked like they were never used… The room looked like a fancy hotel, and he told her so. She just smiled, and looked a bit sad.

The only thing that seemed to say _Haru_ was the abundance of plants in the room and outside on the balcony. When he asked her about them, she said it brought her pleasure to surround herself with life. The greenery injected a soul into the space. The dirt gave her a heart.

Ren envisioned Haru as he had met her—properly met her—covered in mud and draped in baggy Shujin tracksuits. The life in her eyes had been inexorable then. He hadn’t seen it at all since they’d stepped into her home.

(She’d brightened when he suggested they go garden on the school roof for the rest of the afternoon.)

Standing in Akechi’s room now, Ren can’t help but think he’s never seen anything at once so different and so painfully similar. Akechi’s room, for no want of expensive and luxury items, has none of the class or elegance of Haru’s pristine display case. It’s clear a lot of money has gone into the acquisition of everything in the room but there’s no pattern or logic to the random sprawl of them all over the place, and he suspects there’s about as much dust as there is everything else, collected in the random corners of things too cluttered together to clean.

“I wouldn’t have taken Akechi-kun for a hoarder,” Haru says.

Haru’s room did not belong to her, but Akechi’s did him—in fact it might have been one of the only such places. Still, looking around, Ren understands why Haru had labelled it _lonely_. More books than anyone on Akechi’s schedule had time to read. Stacks of papers, printed articles, puzzles—stacked and hopeful, like to be saved for a future spell of free time, but it didn’t seem they’d been attended for a while. An overflowing waste paper bin beneath the desk full of scrap paper that didn’t look like it was useful for anything but the recycling anymore. A small case of miscellaneous fossils and gleaming minerals on a far shelf, some labelled and others haphazardly placed, with several more scattered around it still in the packaging they were purchased in like he hadn’t been bothered to display them yet.

The whole space reeks of a person lost at sea, grabbing at anything that flies past in desperate search of an anchor. There is no love in this room, no self, no _home_. Haru had turned to plants, externalising life when she could not find it within. Akechi, it seems, had turned to _things_ , and found little success.

* * *

“You didn’t buy anything,” Akechi complained. “I thought it would be fun to shop with you, Amamiya-kun, but you’re far more frugal than I would have expected.”

“That’s me. Always subverting expectations.”

Akechi sighed, ever-theatrical. “What was I supposed to think? Your room is full of those little knick-knacks. A bowl of ramen, a sea slug? No rhyme or reason at all—but your hands are empty and I’m holding a Roomba I don’t need.”

“It’s an attic,” Ren said, smiling back slow and deliberate. “Isn’t it the place for it?”

“For junk?”

“They’re not junk,” Ren objected. “They’re sentimental.”

“Ah, sentimental,” Akechi said, grinning. “For a sentimental fool like yourself.”

“I’m the fool? You’re holding a Roomba you don’t need.”

“To clean my floor of the sort of rubbish I thought you would be guilty of purchasing.” Akechi leant back in the train seat he’d managed to snag ahead of Ren, who was leaning on a pole front of him with only minimal sulking. “Must you hang off that thing? It’s probably seen germs you’ve never even met.”

Ren poked his tongue out as though to lick the pole, then made a face before committing to the bit. Akechi looked appropriately horrified anyway. “I don’t buy things for my room. They’re gifts.”

Akechi made a sound of comprehension. “From your many admirers, then.”

Ren snorted. “No one’s exactly lining up to give sea slugs to a known criminal.”

“And yet!” Akechi said.

“They’re from _friends_ , Akechi. You know, friends?” Ren rolled his eyes. “They’re like admirers, but they say your name instead of squealing it.”

“I’ve never heard any of these ‘friends’ of yours say your name—isn’t it always ‘this guy’ and ‘him’? Have they perhaps forgotten it?”

“I’m tired of you,” Ren announced, and Akechi laughed, delighted. “You’re mean. Did you know you’re mean?”

“I certainly did, but don’t tell anyone.” Akechi winked. “Our secret. Does this mean I win?”

“It’s a _conversation._ No one wins.”

“That’s what losers say.” Akechi hoisted his new Roomba up. “Why did you let me buy this?”

“Since when do I tell you what to do?”

“The train will stop at Yongen-Jaya,” announced the train. “Yongen-Jaya. The doors on the left side will open.”

“Want coffee?” Ren offered, before Akechi could open his mouth to subtly invite himself.

Akechi smiled. “Certainly, if you’re offering. Will you help me set up my new Roomba?”

Ren frowned. “In the attic? You’ll have to carry it home.”

“Oh, I can manage a Roomba on my lap if it means a little more of your company, Amamiya-kun,” Akechi said smoothly. “Besides, I’m excited to put this together, and I don’t think I can wait.”

“You just want to spy on my stuff,” Ren said. The train slowed and he swayed on the pole, clinging to it just to piss Akechi off.

“I’ve seen it all,” Akechi protested.

“Yeah but now you want to make _points_ about it.” Ren let his next sway rock him toward the opening doors, swinging gracefully out of it onto the platform as Akechi got up to follow him.

“Perhaps I want decorating tips,” Akechi said, matching his pace on the stairs. “It’s only an attic, but it does feel rather cosy, don’t you think?”

“Get a cat,” Ren advised.

“Hmm. I suppose my new toy could pick up the fur.” Akechi shook his head. “I wonder how you do it. Is it the atmosphere of the café, perhaps?”

“What?”

“The—vibe, I suppose—of your room,” Akechi said. “I’ve been wondering about it. It’s plain. A little drab, even.”

“Thanks.”

“But it always feels somehow full of life,” Akechi added. “I do enjoy being there.”

“Thanks,” said Ren again. “I guess I have good stuff.”

“Yes,” said Akechi thoughtfully. “Gifts, you say—souvenirs, for our Tokyo tourist? Perhaps I’ll visit a few of those places myself. I wouldn’t mind a ramen bowl for my fine china shelf.”

“I’ll get you a sea slug if you want,” said Ren, and Akechi laughed, and pushed open the door to Leblanc.

* * *

“There’s Roomba Hood,” Ren remembers, spotting the Roomba in a dusty corner of Akechi’s room. It has a sticky note taped to it, adorned with a little drawing of a bow, done by Ren himself.

“Roomba Hood?” asks Ann, while Futaba groans, “That’s so _lame_ ,” so violently it sounds like it hurts. Ren points at the Roomba. “He named his Roomba?” Ann says incredulously, like naming a Roomba is _dumb_ , or something.

“I named his Roomba,” says Ren.

Yusuke inspects it. “This is a poorly drawn bow.”

Ren pouts at him. “Oh, I am sorry, Joker. It is, though,” Yusuke adds, and shrugs when Ren pouts harder.

“Does anyone else feel like maybe we shouldn’t be looking too closely at his things,” says Ann, a little tentative. Then, more defensively, when the others look at her: “I mean, I wouldn’t want Akechi-kun poking around in _my_ room.”

“Maybe somethin’ in here’ll help us change his heart,” Ryuji suggests.

“You just wanna poke through his stuff!”

“Shaddup!”

“Panther’s right,” Makoto interrupts. “Let’s rest and continue. There’s still a long way to go, after all. Does anyone need restoratives?”

They call him _Leader_ , sometimes. It gets a little weird to Ren, how little they actually say his name—it’s _Joker_ more than it ever is Ren and sometimes he thinks he’ll get Pavloved into responding first to ‘this guy’ before his own name. Leader, trump card, person last of all. Makoto takes charge more than he does most of the time and mostly he lets her. It’s not like he asked to be leader. He’s only bitter when it involves throwing his life in the pool, and then perhaps not as much as he ought to be, anyway.

They heal and take stock. They’ve barely made a dent in the Palace, is the consensus—someone as infinitely complicated ( _effin’ annoying!_ ) as Akechi would obviously have a heart so labyrinthine, and there’s been every indication that this is Wing One of many. How many they’ll have to pass through to reach the VIP Box? Unclear, at this point. A long way remains. Ryuji downs a Dr. Salt NEO, smacks it down on the table and announces, “One up, Joker!” so Ren slams back two and Morgana slaps his back when he chokes. Then they’re off again.

* * *

“I never would have guessed, you know,” Akechi says offhand, while Ren struggles to shove a damp leg into his jeans. “That you were so much the competitive type. You don’t seem it, from the outside.”

“What do I seem.”

“Not much of anything,” Akechi says, cheerful, and gains precious seconds when Ren stops to glare at him. He’s buttoned his shirt wrong in his haste and Ren will not tell him. “I wouldn’t have expected such a strong personality had I only passed you in the street. That’s a good thing, you know. Anonymity can be so useful.”

“You wouldn’t know,” says Ren, getting tangled in his sleeves. Damn it. Akechi’s noticed his buttons and is smoothly undoing them like he’d meant to the whole time, like he thinks he can still fool Ren with shit like that.

“You’d be surprised. I had my fair share of the days before notoriety.” Akechi’s fingers slip and he winces. “Of course, I didn’t appreciate them as much as I do now, but they do say those things about hindsight.” He reaches for his coat and in a panic, Ren bats it off the hook. “Really?”

“All’s fair.”

“In which, Joker?” Akechi makes a show of dusting his coat off before slipping it on, just to flaunt his spare moments of victory. “My point.”

“You are going to bankrupt me,” Ren tells him, still halfway into his blazer. “I’ve been to the bathhouse more this week than the last month.”

Akechi wrinkles his nose. “I know I said to take advantage of your anonymity, Ren, but you still ought to _bathe_ ,” and hops when Ren tries to kick him. “Oh, that’s hardly mature.”

“Me. You’re the one who turns dressing into a speed contest.”

“Is it _just_ me?” This is tossed smugly over his shoulder as he makes his exit, along with a patronising few hundred yen for entry which land squarely in Ren’s bag. “Keep the change—I won’t let you be a cheap date if you insist on blaming me.”

Ren frowns, opens his mouth to retort, but Akechi is long gone, smirk in the winds.

* * *

Sometimes Ren thinks it’s bizarre that the Palaces they explore all look so alike in so many respects. Be it spaceport or cruiser or theatre, each has its long winding corridors and inexplicably locking doors—the convenient platforms, the vents to nowhere, a million fail-safes a guard wouldn’t need, for an obstacle meant to keep the likes of them out. He leads them past patrolling officers in velvet vest, dispels a third, a sixth, a seventh Rangda with a flick of his wrist and a flash of light.

They’re running on empty when they hit the second safe room, switched twice between front and relief, and with a nod from their leader they collapse into crushed velvet chaises without a second look at Akechi’s flickering bedroom.

Going like this, they won’t make good time. Ren lets Makoto dole out the medicine, ration out the curry he made fresh yesterday (honest), and restructures. Restrategises. He was too reckless the past few rooms, too careless—started too many fights he could have slipped past, made a couple moves that took more energy than they were worth.

They can’t know but he’s rattled. Off his game. Ren rumples his hair and smooths his face, keeps the mask fixed. Fearless leader, always. Nevermind the treading through the soul of his—whatever. Mind Trek: the Eightquel, or whatever, by now. Nothing they haven’t seen before, nothing but the worn strings their once teammate dangles by, as grotesque to hang as they would be to cut and let him crumple. In the next wing Ren will be more careful. More stealthy. He’s seen the true forms of the monsters here—they’re not what he’s interested in.

“Should we continue?” asks Haru, and they all turn to him. Exhausted, at the ready. They’re here for him, Ann said. All for him.

Joker’s used to eyes on him, by now.

“Take five,” he murmurs. Watches them slump when he relaxes his hands. “We’ll rest.”

* * *

“How do you _always_ know when a boss fight is coming up,” Akechi complains, indignance almost drowned by the clangs and whoops of the arcade, and Ren wipes the sweat from his hair with an equally sweaty hand off the console buttons of the only shitty shooter in the place Akechi isn’t learned in and says, “Practice.”

* * *

And so they wait in the wings, for something.

They’ve scanned the backstage. The curtains are black here, draped and heavy and Futaba emerges briefly from Prometheus to nestle into a fold, scaring the living daylights out of Yusuke when he runs a gloved hand along the soft fabric. In the wings, waiting to emerge, though the stagehand Shadows pay them no mind, frantic and busy and ever-moving. There are no other exits, no secret vents, just the door on the stage they’ve all tiredly accepted as the way forward. Past the _thing_.

“I don’t think this act is going to end anytime soon,” Makoto whispers to Ren, who knows. But like a train wreck or a fresh corpse or a dull metal wall risen from the floor, he’s transfixed. Though not as blinding as the crystal outside, the stage lights freeze him, even from this distance. The polished wood of the gargantuan puppet is only a glimpse from here. They’re waiting for his cue, watching from the shadows they’ve all melted into for him to nod or gesture them out in a flash of red but he’s stock still, waiting for a curtain call that won’t end. The applause continues.

“Joker,” Morgana prompts, a little flash of blue at his feet, and Joker slinks back into himself.

“Let’s go,” he says. Sticks his hands into his pockets and saunters onto centre stage, into the spotlight.

Into the…

The Puppet looms overhead. Up close—well, it’s not _more_ unsettling, perhaps, just… close.

Its blank, half-lidded eyes are pointed at the corner from which they emerge but it doesn’t seem to see them, just stares past them with a sort of hopelessness that nothing carved from wood should be able to achieve. It doesn’t move when they approach, which is weirder, or maybe it can’t. Futaba is scanning and saying nothing which is more concerning than any sting she could throw out. Ren is beginning to think they might be able to get past and slip through that door without a fight when the whole creature rears up, back strings going taut, and lashes wildly out at him with a horrible clack of its arms—he leaps back and crashes directly into Haru, who catches and dips him like a princess before twirling him frantically into Ryuji and the puppet gouges a deep gash in the stage floor.

As they watch it screeches, howls an unnatural shriek, eyes suddenly wide and bulging larger. They ‘blink’ a few times, eyelids flipping, then the puppet Akechi goes limp on its strings again, though decidedly more upright than before, like whoever’s pulling the strings is now on guard. Its eyes stay open this time, bright gold and piercing.

“Okay,” says Futaba. “That sucked.”

The crowd is roaring with applause. It feels torrential, crashing down on Ren while he steadies himself on his teammates, crushing him to kneel beneath it and it’s _stupid_ , it’s just _sound_. Makoto says, “I guess we’ll have to fight it,” and they all look a little dubiously at the puppet which says nothing back—its eyes are slack but its mouth firmly closed and now it looks almost—curious. Not hostile. Ren’s eyes dip to the new scrape across the wooden stage.

“It’s kind of weird that his Shadow can’t even talk,” Ann murmurs, sounding a little suspicious, and Ren agrees, but they didn’t make him leader to wax philosophical. That was always someone else’s job. He raises a hand. Fires his gun once, because he can.

“Formation,” and okay, it is a little gratifying that they leap to his word like that no matter how softly he speaks. “Support from the back. Noir, Panther—”

He doesn’t need to finish. Noir’s cast Tetrakarn on him before he can speak although he’d rather she prioritise Mona, as their healer, or herself, or really anyone other than him, and Panther’s already charging up. Puppet Akechi shifts on his strings and Joker reaches into his soul to pull out whichever mask he needs, like always, and murmurs, “Rakunda.”

Lands. The puppet roars, rage and fear filling the air before fire replaces it, engulfing the thing as it lashes out at random—a string snaps and nothing changes, and scorched wood polish sears acrid in their noses. Panther rears back to strike again. Hecate moves with her.

The applause continues…

“It’s burning,” Queen shouts. “Mona!”

Joker feels his hair whip around his mask before he even sees Mona leap, twisting midair to meet Zorro’s rapier as the Garudyne hits—the puppet howls again—

The applause continues…

“ _Wait_ ,” Oracle shrieks one second before the wave hits, and Joker crumples from within.

They've never really got the measure of how the status effects work. Fire, at least, makes sense, and Bless can be explained away, but the crushing flood of total despair doesn't feel like it should be inflictable through a murmured curse. The first time it ever hit him it took three restoratives before he could stop shaking, Ann murmuring low in his ear and rubbing his back while he stared at her abandoned mask on the floor of Futaba’s Palace and tried to keep breathing. Too close to home. The floor dropping out from beneath him when the judge read out the verdict and he'd looked around, and around, and around, and saw all the blank faces staring back at him.

(It might have been the bitterness that killed him, then and now. Well, little hero? And for what?)

And then: the realisation, hitting on the way out, and on the way back, and in the ceiling over the bed that wasn’t his anymore, and in the bag he toted to Tokyo, and in his own hands trembling so the rattle of the train disguised them, that you could do every single thing right and go to hell anyway. And what was the goddamn point.

“—ker! Joker!”

And a fan to the face.

“Joker!”

“Fuck,” he groans. "What?"

“Get up!” Mona screeches. “It's coming again!”

Right—because then there's this: a burn you could bump off with the application of a good balm or some believe-in-it magic but despair left vestiges of itself hooked and snagged into your skin after it had ‘healed’, like an ingrown hair, or the barb of a bee sting. He's still shaking when he shakes it off. They're all watching anxiously for him to stand up straight again.

He manages: “I'm good,” before Skull howls, “Eff this!” and he's being tackled violently around the middle. And he can't complain, because the puppet's fist slams down on where he was. Skull's leg just barely escapes the impact.

“Fuck, Ryuji!”

"Code names," Skull grits out. “I'm good. You good?”

Nearly squashed and just half out of not caring—“I'm good." And then: “Thanks,” because he'll never really get accustomed to the fact that his teammates would take a killing blow for him. It's hard to reconcile that with the bitterness and not a thought he wants to get lost in again still clawing his way out of the throes of despair and pervasive self-loathing. It's his bad leg. Ryuji's bad leg. Inches away Akechi's Shadow draws the fist back for a second go around. “Get up!”

“Right,” gasps Skull and leaps to his feet, yanks Joker up by the arm. “Don't get hit next time!”

“Roger.”

In the back lines, Fox muses, “So his Shadow is a puppet. How fitting,” and Oracle shrieks, “Can we _save the philosophy_ and _not get squashed?_ Panther, burn it again!”

Ever-obliging: Panther raises Blazing Hell and the Puppet _howls_ , writhes and makes for a grotesque silhouette in the glowing firelight. Screeching incomprehensible obscenities, arms flailing wild as its strings curl and snap and Panther’s eyes go blank. Joker realises what’s up a second before she wheels around and roars the flames into Fox’s face.

Noir screams. Mona’s already through a Baisudi and Fox is coughing, at some point gone to his knees, embers alight in his tail, face and suit blackened but blessedly whole. Joker breathes. Breathes. Watches Fox follow his lead and take a shuddering breath of the foul smoke-filled air. Fox raises his head and meets his eyes, ice-cold and alive, and smoke is the best thing Joker’s ever tasted.

Queen is shouting for Panther over the relentless applause but it’s not until the Energy Shower that the flames finally die. Panther crumples and Skull is there in a heartbeat to hold her up; she manages a horrified “Sorry” that Fox brushes off with an easy nod.

“Ain’t there any way to shut them up,” Skull is snapping. Joker barely hears, and the applause must _truly_ be deafening if it’s drowning _Ryuji_ out. It’s somehow grown louder in the preceding seconds and Puppet Akechi pauses what he’s doing to give a jerky, dangling bow.

“He seems revitalised,” Oracle crackles in their ears. “Wait—he’s gaining back HP!”

“Are you _kidding_?” Mona wails.

“It’s the applause,” Noir gasps. “It’s healing him!”

“She’s right!” Oracle yells. “It’s getting louder every time someone lands a hit, so the effect gets stronger, too!”

“The applause seems connected to Akechi’s strength and health,” Mona muses. “Joker, let’s see if we can stop it!”

Every time someone lands a hit…? “Guard,” Joker says.

“What?” Skull yells back. “C’mon, I got an opening here!”

“Don’t attack.” Joker falls back and gestures for the others to do the same.

“Wait, he’s right,” Queen says, eyes brightening. “If the applause gets louder whenever someone lands a good blow, that means _us_ , too. Stop attacking it! Guard so it can’t land a satisfying hit!”

They brace for attack. The Puppet lashes, but the hit lands dull. Again. Again.

The audience is growing restless…

Again.

Puppet Akechi seems discomfited…

“Keep goin’!”

The applause is dying down…

“Do you hear that?” Panther whispers. Joker listens. Disinterested muttering filters over the crowd and through to the stage. He waves; they all guard again.

The audience is displeased…

The applause has stopped.

“Something’s happening!” Oracle reports, and then gasps. “What’s happening…?”

The Puppet goes slack in his strings like whoever’s controlling him can’t be bothered with it anymore. Stretched taut while he hangs in the silence. The lack of applause is suddenly absolutely cavernous and the weight of it is crushing. And then a horrible screech. Like nothing they’ve heard yet.

And then…

“Wait,” Fox tremors, but too late. Puppet Akechi jolts violently once like he’s been shocked. Twice.

“He’s taking damage,” Oracle whispers. “Massive damage.”

The arms of the puppet reach up to clutch his head as though in pain, the motion limp, jerky, differently to the smooth pulled motions of the strings. He starts shaking, screaming, _screaming_ , twitching—

“What’s…” Queen falters, eyes wide with horror. “What’s happening to him?”

“He’s losing SP,” Oracle says.

Panther takes a step back, unsteady. “Is this… despair…?”

Fox’s face is tight. “This is… truly horrible…”

“That’s three times,” Noir reports, voice dead. The Puppet starts shaking, so hard the stage starts to rumble beneath their feet.

“No…” Oracle’s voice cracks. “No…!”

“Anat!”

Like the friendly corpse, the familiar trainwreck. Joker had been transfixed, but he blinks back as sparks shower the Puppet. He turns to see Queen drop her hand from casting her second Energy Shower of the fight.

The Puppet jerks once and then falls limp, hanging still, like it would be breathing heavily if something had ever breathed life into it.

Queen slowly drops her face to her hands. Noir rests a hand on her shoulder, eyes worried.

“I… I couldn’t let it…” she whispers. “It was too awful…”

They all stare up at the still, unnaturally heaving Puppet.

Fox silently raises his gun.

The Thieves collectively flinch as the Puppet dissipates. The applause starts back up.

“If we’d left things silent,” Yusuke says, “it would have only happened again.”

Slowly, in the aftermath of battle, Ren feels himself start to return. In the midst of a fight, even in the height of infiltration, the swirling chaos and adrenaline seems to quiet his head, but now, the sombre silence makes it too easy to see the space where the Puppet stood for what it is. What it stands for.

Ann shifts. “Hey… Let’s not stop the applause anymore, okay…?”

“It’ll put us at a severe tactical disadvantage,” says Morgana. “But I agree. That was way too disturbing.”

“The hell’s goin’ on in that guy’s head,” Ryuji mutters.

Morgana looks around at them. “Hey. Let’s keep moving. We can’t afford to hang around.”

“Right,” says Ren, feeling Joker slink back into his brain.

“He dropped something,” Futaba observes, but Joker is already striding toward it. The same deep red with the same embossed gold edges—a ticket.

“‘The Master’,” Morgana reads, “‘invites you to attend the Opera.’”

“I suppose that’s the next wing,” Haru says, holding a hand out for it. Ren passes it over wordlessly for her to examine. “An Opera House.”

“At least we won’t have to break in this time,” Yusuke murmurs.

“How many of these goddamn wings are we gonna have to go through,” Ryuji groans, playing at his usual juvenile anger, but like the rest of them he doesn’t step where the puppet was. Respect, maybe, or resounding horror. The strings still hang from the ceiling, uneven and unattached and drifting a little in the controlled air of the stage, cut to length so they can almost see the corpse of the marionette hanging still.

Joker reclaims the ticket and tucks it into his pocket like it’s inconsequential. Like it isn’t a reward for dispatch, like he’s not going to think about what that could stand for. He strides forward like the strings looming overhead mean nothing and tries the door, which opens easily.

“Wait—” says Ann suddenly, faltering a little when he turns too abruptly to check on her. “Just—there’s a chest.”

They look. It’s hidden in the wings on the other side of the stage, gleaming.

“Good spot,” he says, and she flinches a little even though his voice is soft as ever. Ryuji slaps him on the back while he unlocks the chest. Just a sword. Yusuke glances it over and passes, hand firm on the hilt of his own. He’ll sell it later, then. Stows it in Morgana’s pack, whatever sense that makes. All their loot ends up there at some point, the stuff they pilfer from the hearts of men and decide isn’t worth it after wrestling a couple lost souls for the right.

“Think we’re done here,” Ryuji says, and Ren glances around the stage once to confirm. His Third Eye is starting to clear, though only a little. The gleam still lacks allure. Besides, whatever completionist streak blazed through him once isn’t present this time. Somehow conquering Akechi’s Palace doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a searing victory like the others and the entitlement that’s carried him through changing past hearts has long fizzled.

Ren doesn’t know when his teammates started to see the flick of his tailcoat as the go-ahead, but they file behind him as he goes for the door once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rt on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/corviiid/status/1323311722032111616)! hope you enjoyed!! love you!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ haha... sorry for the wait. overcome with perfectionist terror? you know how it is? hope you enjoy

Akechi came by more, now, and had been doing so ever since that day in late August when he’d come into their confidence. Ren was becoming used to his presence at the bar. It was actually a little annoying, since Akechi seemed to find an excuse at least once per visit to not-so-subtly dig at the Phantom Thieves and at Ren for supporting them, but it _seemed_ to be in what Akechi clearly thought of as good-natured fun. Never mind that he’d recently taken to laughing when Ren couldn’t suppress a pout about it.

“Sometimes you could just drink your coffee without opening your mouth,” he’d muttered once after a particularly imperious and (Ren thought) unnecessary jab at Ren’s ideals, to which Akechi had actually snorted and pointed out that he couldn’t exactly drink coffee with his mouth shut, could he? Which had made Ren accidentally (“”) put a little too much chilli into Akechi’s curry, which had wiped the smugness off his face and replaced it with spluttering.

In September, they found themselves frequenting Shinjuku moreso than what had become their usual haunts. Akechi refused, however, to accompany him there after dark, and had in fact delivered quite a stern lecture about how he ought not to be going there at all.

“Boring,” said Ren.

“I’m afraid this is on you, Amamiya-kun,” Akechi said, eyes twinkling. “You shouldn’t tell me about your unlawful activity. I do work in law enforcement, you know.”

“Narc,” Ren added, so Akechi shoved him into a store mascot and got them both a stern talking to which they just barely got through without snickering.

The reason they were in Shinjuku was because Akechi had run out of books and wanted to try the store there. This was only vaguely successful, as the storeowner only consented to sell them about five of the available books and none of Akechi’s sweet talk made the slightest difference.

It was a shame, Akechi sighed as they walked back out to the street, a copy of the _Flowerpedia_ tucked under his arm. Ren asked if he’d actually been all that keen on the dubious-looking covers in the rest of the store, and Akechi shot him a rather wry glance out the corner of his eye.

“Not particularly,” he said. “But at the end, there, it was really more about the game of convincing him than it was about the books.”

Ren thought this was a bit stupid and said so.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Akechi said, grinning. “It’s an odd and prideful idiosyncrasy of mine.”

“I think you’re a nerd,” Ren announced, and got bopped on the nose with an illustrated hyacinth for his trouble.

Akechi continued to negotiate with the store without much success the next few times, but Ren was happy to accompany him if only because Akechi had a surprising wealth of knowledge about the area which he was only too willing to share.

“How do you know so much about the red-light district?” Ren blurted once, interrupting his most recent impromptu lesson.

Akechi blinked. “It’s a hotspot for crime,” he pointed out. “I’m quite familiar with the area from my work.”

That made sense, Ren supposed. He didn’t think he knew Akechi well enough yet to interrogate what he thought was a slightly odd look in Akechi’s eye when he’d said that.

In the late afternoons, once Akechi had finished with the bookstore, they’d usually go and see a movie before they headed home for the day. The cinema didn’t update its screenings that much, so a few times they wound up seeing the same film once or twice over and mocking it in the back row, mimicking the dialogue and snickering until they were violently shushed again.

Ren hadn’t taken Akechi for the type— _I thought I was supposed to be the delinquent between the two of us_ , he’d whispered once, and Akechi smirked and whispered back, _What if that’s what I wanted you to think?_

* * *

The stairs out from the back of the Puppet’s stage look different to those in the lobby. Less ornate, more solemn, marble and monochromatic but for a signature gold vein. Joker resists the urge to call for a uniform change; breaking into the second Wing is starting to feel like a black-tie occasion.

The Opera House has a cooler, more refined sort of energy, and the applause is distinctly restrained as compared to the raucous laughter of the Puppet Show. Light and unceasing and perhaps muffled by gloves. The palette is more muted here, dull and stark and modern in a stuffy sort of way.

They slip their way through the backstage, as is expected. Entry, this time, was simple matter with the gilded ticket Joker pulled smoothly from his coat pocket. The Shadows they encounter are almost melancholy, dignified and funereal. It takes just about everything they have to take down a particularly determined Valkyrie, only to promptly be confronted by a Unicorn, at which point Joker takes Oracle’s cue and instructs them all officially to hightail it the fuck out of there.

They double back to the last safe room they’d found (another copy of Akechi’s bedroom, where Ryuji unwinds by tossing empty soda cans at his collection of Featherman figurines heedless of the fact that the aluminum simply ripples through their illusory poses anyway) and collapse for a few minutes before Makoto meekly asks what they’ve clearly all been thinking: “Do we think it might be time to call it a day?”

Ren’s doling out the curry again. Scraping the Tupperware. He’s going to have to make more tonight. His coat brushes the edge of the map as he leans over to hand a portion to Haru. “Do you need a restorative?”

“I need a _nap_ ,” Ann complains, lounging back like a big cat until she’s draped across Futaba’s lap. “For like, a hundred years.”

Guilt again, prickling at the edges of his soul like a new mask. They’re all exhausted, ornery and aching, but Joker knows they won’t question him if he tells them to continue. This is not their most stressful infiltration and it doesn’t even approach their highest stakes. Expulsion is not a risk and nor is extortion. Just his own precious feelings, just the soul of a boy who’s rejected their help and his life several times over now. They’ve been through worse and Ryuji still refuses to acknowledge the knee injury their little excursions have certainly exacerbated, though Ren doesn’t need a third eye or even a second to see the way he winces when they climb out of the eighteenth vent of the day. Half of them are staring up at him with doleful eyes and the others won’t look at him at all. Perhaps afraid he’ll give the order to go on, knowing they’ll obey.

“Let’s go home,” he says. The air itself relaxes. “Come back fresh.”

“We still have t-t-time,” Morgana yawns, snapping when Yusuke pokes a curious finger in his mouth. “Hey!”

“Mona’s right,” Ann says, ignoring this completely. “The election’s not for a while still, so we should pace ourselves.”

“How far in do you think we are?” Haru asks, and Futaba frowns at her incomprehensible scrolling text. “Halfway?”

“Not even close,” Futaba reports to frustrated sighs. “I’d say… a quarter? No, less.”

“ _Less?_ ” Ryuji squawks. “Oh, man. I’m gonna be fifty before we get the treasure.”

“It’s hard to tell, okay?!” Futaba retorts, her green text walls speeding up in her defensiveness. “The map that guy gave us covers the entire _planet_ , so it’s kind of difficult to figure out what the shortest route to the treasure is. And I _still_ can’t see clearly in this stupid place!”

“Is it still blocking you?” asks Yusuke, and Futaba huffs her sweaty fringe out of her goggles, which seems to mean yes. “Interesting. I wonder where he got that ability.”

“I wonder why he uses it,” says Haru.

“Do you think he means to?” Ann muses.

“Let’s worry about that another time,” Makoto says wearily. “Joker, do you remember the way back to the entrance?” Yes, of course. “Great. Let’s go home for today.” She suppresses a yawn. “Make sure you all get some rest. Drink plenty of water.”

They’re too tired to even make fun of her. Joker takes point, as always, as they drag themselves back to the entrance and let the Nav take them home.

_You have returned to the real world. Welcome back._

* * *

_People come and they go…_

“We’ve heard this song,” said Ren.

Akechi grinned. “We have, haven’t we. I suppose the singer is entitled to her favourites as much as any of us.” He took a sip of his drink; it was a shocking purple. “Mm. That’s quite refreshing, don’t you think?”

“Dunno,” said Ren.

“You _are_ obstinate,” Akechi complained, with a dramatic sigh. “Don’t tell me you’re still on this. I thought we were past it.”

“Did you,” said Ren, flatly.

“I would have thought you’d tired of my opinions by now,” Akechi sniffed.

“That’s not the point,” said Ren. “I just think you should learn to say things that aren’t relative to someone else.”

“Well, that’s quite rich, Ren,” Akechi said politely. “I sometimes think you ought to learn how to speak at all.”

Ren, sullen, said nothing, proving it.

“Go on,” Akechi encouraged coolly, warm red eyes piercing him over the rim of the cool purple drink. “I even spoke first, so you have permission to respond.”

To this Ren gave him a kicked puppy sort of look that made him relent. “Oh, fine,” Akechi sighed. “I’m sorry. You _do_ have a point, but it truly is just that I enjoy hearing what people have to say—well, you in particular, I admit.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Ren said, making Akechi snort. “So you’re saying you _don’t_ change your opinion when someone disagrees with you.”

“I don’t,” Akechi said. “I may… tweak my wording, slightly.” Seeing Ren’s face, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t be so holier-than-thou, it’s simply the easiest way to avoid a pointless argument.”

“Not everything has to be an argument.”

“You’re doing an excellent job of proving otherwise. Discussion, then.” Akechi cast him a wry look. “Don’t tell me you’re _so_ magnanimous you’ve never wished your way out of a pointless conversation.”

Ren thought wearily of the Phan-Site and said, “Point.”

“You see? Someone as pure and simple as yourself might argue—oh, don’t give me that look, Mister Justice Itself,” Akechi said, amused. “You might argue honesty is always the best policy, but I can’t agree. When you work with as many people as I have to, you sometimes have to employ a few techniques just to keep your head.”

“And here I thought you loved people,” said Ren, cutting eyes at him so that Akechi rolled his eyes again. “Darling of the media.”

“I dearly hope we don’t become enemies one day, Ren. You have far too much dirt on me.” Akechi tipped an ice cube out of his empty glass and skimmed it across the table. It slipped off the edge and landed in Ren’s lap. “Oops.”

“You did that on purpose.”

“And you’ll find I didn’t claim otherwise.” Akechi smoothly handed him an embroidered handkerchief. “Well, you’ve won our little discussion, so which unfiltered opinion of mine would you like to hear?”

“I dunno,” said Ren, gingerly picking the ice cube out of his lap.

“Were you antagonising me for the sake of it, then?” asked Akechi, pretending to be enraged. “You’re such a shit-stirrer for how quiet you are.”

“You have such a potty mouth for someone who wears sweater vests.”

“I don’t know why you always come after my clothing choices. It’s not like you’re the most fashionable person I know.”

“You’re right,” said Ren. “Clearly I need more beige pants.” Akechi flicked another ice cube at him. “Please.”

“So sorry,” said Akechi. He flagged down a waiter and ordered two more drinks. “Oh, it’s on me, don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe I wanted something different,” Ren said.

“Here’s an opinion: you’re dreadfully annoying,” Akechi announced, making Ren grin. “I don’t know why I spend so much time with you.”

“You don’t have any other friends.”

“Yes, and your company is making me remember why I never bothered making any.” Akechi made a face at him. “Come on, I’m serious. If you’re going to needle me, you might as well ask me a question.”

“That’s still talking relative to me,” Ren pointed out.

Akechi cursed. “You’re right. There’s nothing quite like having my one friend point out the habit I didn’t even realise I had.” He shot Ren a wry smile. “Well, we’ll see how cocky you’re feeling after I’ve subjected you to twenty minutes of philosophical nonsense.”

“If I didn’t like philosophical nonsense, you’d have zero friends,” said Ren.

“I’m touched.” Akechi tapped his chin with his straw. “Well, let’s see. How familiar are you with hedonism?”

“That’s the guy you quoted to me,” said Ren.

“No,” said Akechi, plainly trying not to laugh. “That was… Hegel.”

“Then I’m not familiar,” said Ren, doing what he thought was a pretty good job at maintaining his dignity.

Akechi laughed. “Okay. Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that the highest purpose of human life is the pursuit of pleasure. It argues that pleasure is the ultimate good, and anything that does not bring pleasure is unhelpful to our wellbeing. Does that make sense?”

“No,” said Ren, frowning. “I mean, yes, I understand you, but no.”

“Well, good, because I’m not done. You can rest assured I will not be making an argument for hedonism.” Akechi’s posture had shifted and so had the tone of his voice, attaining a lecture-like quality that might have been frightening if it didn’t draw Ren in so much. “I assume, then, that you haven’t heard of the experience machine.”

“You can just assume I don’t know anything, I think,” Ren said, a little defeated.

Akechi gave him a sort of pitying smile. “Don’t feel bad. I enjoy explaining these things.”

“Clearly,” said Ren, but Akechi was so entranced with his new topic that for once he did not seem to pick up on the dryness—or perhaps didn’t give a shit.

“The experience machine, or the pleasure machine, is a thought experiment intended to refute hedonism,” said Akechi. “Imagine, if you will, a machine that can provide you with any sensation of pleasure in the world. If you hook yourself up to this machine, then at the press of a button, your brain is stimulated in a way such that you cannot tell the difference between the pleasure the machine gives you and the pleasure you could otherwise have attained. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” said Ren.

“So I put to you this,” said Akechi. “Would you hook yourself up to the machine?”

“No,” said Ren, at once.

“Why not?”

“It’s not the same,” said Ren. “It doesn’t matter what I’m feeling in my brain. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting next to some machine pressing a button. It’s unfulfilling.”

Akechi looked pleased. “And thus goes the argument,” he said. “But let me follow the logic a little further with an established argument form—just an indulgence.” He picked up his napkin and crumpled it into a ball. “This argument form is called modus ponens. It’s a conditional statement: if _x_ , then _y_. As an example…” He smiled. “If this napkin hits you in the face— _x_ —then I have good aim— _y_.” And threw the napkin.

It hit Ren in the face. “Thanks,” said Ren.

“Therefore?” asked Akechi.

“You have good aim,” said Ren. “Supposedly. I’m starting to think this is just an excuse to throw things at me.”

Akechi laughed. “You understand the form now, yes? So.” Now he drew Ren’s napkin toward himself, smiling indulgently when Ren cautiously leaned away, and plucked a pen from his pocket. “Suppose we accept hedonism’s proposition that pleasure is the ultimate good. Now suppose that doing activity _x_ brings more pleasure than activity _y_. We arrive at our first premise: To achieve our goal, we ought to do activity _x_ , not activity _y_.” Akechi wrote this down. “For example, you might prefer spending time with me to doing your homework.”

“Spending time with you is feeling a lot like homework right now,” said Ren.

“Hey, you asked. Our second premise, then, is this: Plugging yourself into the experience machine will bring more pleasure than not. That is to say, machine is _x_ , life is _y_.” Akechi wrote this down also. He drew a line under both premises and then looked expectantly at Ren. “Therefore?”

“Therefore… we should plug ourselves into the machine?”

“Correct.” Akechi dotted the napkin three times and then scribbled Ren’s answer under the line. “But, as you have so astutely pointed out, the promise of pleasure is often not enough to convince people to abandon their lives in favour of a machine. Which gives us another piece of information—that in the minds of many, there _is_ a reason not to plug into the machine, so one of our premises must be wrong.”

“Which means the purpose of humanity can’t be pleasure,” said Ren, cottoning on. “Got it.”

“I’m pleased you catch on so fast.” Akechi leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. “So tell me, Ren—what are your reasons not to plug yourself into the experience machine?”

“I told you,” said Ren. “I want to live, not just feel like I’m living.”

“That’s Nozick’s first point, too,” said Akechi. “Ah—Robert Nozick, who coined the experiment.”

“I got that, thanks.”

“His second reason was that plugging into the machine makes you less of a person than it does just a blob experiencing thoughts, which takes control away from you as to what kind of person you’d like to be,” said Akechi. “And finally, that plugging into the machine forces you into a reality that’s entirely simulated—man-made. You become limited, and reality becomes shallow.”

“I have a question,” said Ren.

“Yes?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You asked,” said Akechi, looking a little put-out.

“No, I mean, why does it matter? Like, what’s the point?”

This seemed to stump Akechi. “I don’t follow,” he said, frowning.

Ren chewed his straw. “Like… Okay, so people don’t want to be hooked up to a magic machine,” he said. “So what?”

Akechi’s eyes cleared. “Ah, I see. No, you’re missing the point of philosophy.”

“Which is?”

“Philosophy,” Akechi said. “Proving the point is its _own_ point. It’s about thinking through questions we don’t fully understand so that we can come to a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Plus, don’t you think it’s interesting?”

Ren must have still looked lost, because Akechi added, “It’s not about finding an answer, it’s about how you think. It’s fun!”

“That is the lamest thing you’ve ever said,” Ren said, making Akechi cluck his tongue. “But fine. Continue.”

“Really? You haven’t had enough?”

“I like listening to you talk,” said Ren, trying to look engaged. “Tell me more about—Chardonnay.”

Akechi coughed. “That would be a variety of white wine,” he said, biting back another laugh. “It’s alright. Thank you for humouring me. I think I ought to leave off the rest of the lecture for now before you fall asleep on me.”

“I’m not bored,” Ren objected. “Just—I think this is kind of beyond me right now.” He made a mental note to read more books, and possibly to eat more burgers. “Tell me the rest another time.”

“Certainly. I was about to launch into teleology and Aristotle’s principle of perfection, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss that.” Akechi smirked at him. “In any case—now that you’ve seen a somewhat more unfiltered version of myself, I’m sure you understand why I don’t—ah—bust that out too often.”

“I really am interested,” Ren insisted, but from Akechi’s indulgent smile and resigned dismissal from the bar thereafter, he sensed he might have chosen the wrong thing to say somewhere along the line.

* * *

“It’s another stage,” Mona whispers. He’s dangling through the ceiling, Fox holding him by the legs. “I can see a figure there, but he’s not as big as the Puppet.”

“It’s a Shadow,” Oracle reports. “Same kind of reading as last time. Different one, though.”

“Wait, so they really aren’t cognitions?” Panther asks. “They’re really Akechi’s Shadows?”

They’re crammed into a vent, crowded around Mona’s little kicking feet as he strains to see the stage through. Joker wriggles his arm out from where it’s jammed into Skull’s ribs, elbowing Queen in the process, and swipes his sweaty hair out of his face. Truly, the glamour of phantom thievery knew no bounds.

“Definitely a Shadow,” Oracle confirms. “This proves it. There’s more than one.”

“Why does he have more than one Shadow?” Noir whispers.

“Well, he has more than one Persona,” Mona calls up. He’s starting to look a little green. “Can we talk about this later? Pull me up already!”

“There’s no room.” Fox awkwardly shuffles back a bit and kicks Futaba in the knee, making her shriek at him in offence. “Hold on.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Mona groans.

Joker reaches over and tugs him up by the waistpack, slamming the vent shut under him before he can fall through. “Okay?”

“Do you have a mint,” Mona says weakly.

“Not for kitties.”

They vacate the vent and collapse into sweaty piles in the backstage safe room. This is only their second run into the Palace and they’re nearing the end of their second Wing; a murmured discussion confirms they should all be able to manage at least another big fight before they have to tap out. The door to the wings is firmly locked but they’ve found a path to the stage in the crossbeams above the seats, as long as they all trust their balance and/or upper body strength. Mona runs through what few details he could catch: there’s an orchestra pit and a lone figure stood beneath a massive chandelier—the one they’ll have to swing from to land on the stage. Their best guess is that somewhere behind or above the stage will be another door, leading them into the third Wing. What’s certain is that fighting the new Shadow is the only way forward.

“It’s wearing a red mask,” Mona reports. “A long cape. And a tailcoat.”

“What kind of mask?” asks Panther. “Like Crow’s?”

“I couldn’t see,” Mona admits. “I guess we’ll find out.”

It’s a simple enough matter to get to the chandelier. It sways lightly once they’re all stood atop it, the crystals tinkling together. Joker hangs off the stem of it, surveying the stage below. It’s darkened, lit dramatically from beneath with tiny floor lights that rim its edge, then with miscellaneous candelabras stood around the back of it and warm, climbing lights up the walls. The figure’s cape trails as he stalks the stage, singing wordlessly in a rich baritone. From his vantage point above, Joker can see the deep crimson mask on his face, gleaming in the dim light and flickering strangely with the candles. It splits his face in half, covering one eye and down the side of his cheekbone, cutting around his lip. When the figure faces him, he slows to a stop and his voice fades out. He merely stands there, gazing up at the chandelier, and Joker can tell they’ve been spotted. But the second Shadow of Akechi Goro merely looks at them, passive. His mask catches the crystalline light like fresh blood.

“He sees us,” Queen whispers.

The Singer watches them, unblinking. His cloak pools around him, floor lights shining through the black velvet like covered stars, elegantly gloved fingers held aloft and clad in the same rich red as his mask. Silently, he extends a hand up toward them, letting the cape drip off his arm.

“He’s not hostile,” Oracle says. “Not yet, anyway.”

“That will soon change, I believe,” Fox murmurs. “Joker, at your cue.”

“Get ready,” Joker says. “Are you ready?”

A round of affirmative nods. Joker drops.

* * *

You know, Joker, sometimes I think you would save some energy if you didn’t have quite so much a flair for the dramatic.

I’m hearing this from you?

* * *

Up close, the Singer is not menacing the way the Puppet was. He’s elegant, even. Dressed for the opera, his tuxedo is cut to fit and his hair is slicked back. A cane hangs from his right wrist. The mask on his face is curved at the edges, sleek and polished and liquid, like blood that’s been poured over his face. His cloak billows when he flings his arm out toward them yet again. And then he starts to sing.

“Oh, fuck,” Skull whispers. Joker echoes the sentiment.

He’s never thought of Akechi’s voice as deep, but the Shadow sings with a depth he can’t comprehend. It’s clear at once that his song before they landed was barely a prelude; this, rich and directed, is a voice that holds incredible power. Joker feels it hit him in the gut and sink there like a heavy stone, a horrible weight of emotion that drains him like a newly opened pit. Out the corner of his eye he sees Fox drop to one knee, overcome.

“What is this,” Mona chokes out. “What’s he doing?!”

“Hit him,” Joker gasps. “Noir—”

He’s not sure what his thinking is—perhaps that a psychic attack might devastate the onslaught of overwhelming emotion. He sees Noir throw her arm out, mask in hand and in flame, and Milady appears in a burst of blue fire. Her skirts and fluttering fan shield them momentarily from the song’s assault and Joker’s mind clears long enough to see Milady cast a psychic blast in the Singer’s direction. The Singer stumbles—his song falters—

“Now!” Joker yells at the same time Queen shrieks it, and Panther and Skull at once strike out with fire and lightning. For a moment, the air is still, and it seems to hit…

And then Panther screams in frustration and Skull is smacking the side of Captain Kidd’s boat with an angry fist. “Nada, Joker!” Panther yells. “It’s resistant!”

Bad luck. Joker manages not to curse. The distraction seems to have interrupted Akechi’s song, at the very least—he reaches for Mona, who doesn’t need his words. A Garudyne goes out at once, only to blow straight back in his face. So forceful it sends Mona’s ears back.

“Eff _this_ ,” Skull yells just as Fox sends an icy blast in the Singer’s direction, which immediately slams back into him. Joker sees Skull raising his gun just as Oracle shrieks, “ _Wait!_ ”

Too late. Skull fires and the bullet ricochets off an invisible barrier, pinging straight back at him. It embeds itself in his shoulder and he _howls_.

“Skull!”

“It repels!” Oracle wails in despair. “It’s not resistant, it’s _repelling everything_! It’s got a shield! Repeat, it’s got a shield!”

Akechi’s song has resumed full force, mournful and longing, and for once Joker thinks he might be able to put words to it.

_I’m a shape shifter… What else should I be?_

“What’s he singing?” he wonders aloud, to nobody.

“ _Who cares_?” Panther screams. “Don’t shoot it!”

_Please don’t take off my mask…_

“Wait,” Oracle says again, fear clouding her voice. “Wait. Something’s coming. Guys, watch out! Something’s coming!”

_My place to hide…_

The flood hits them all at once with the Singer’s next fretful note. Joker stumbles back with the impact and then feels his knees buckle. They won’t hold his weight anymore. How was he standing to begin with? What is he _doing_ here? They could die—any moment, any of them could—

Dimly, he gets, _oh god, not again_. _Not again_.

“—Joker! Joker! Queen, c’mon, snap out of it!”

—and oh, god, does anyone even know they’re here? They don’t. Of course they don’t. He’s going to die here. He’s going to die, surrounded by the friends he led to their doom, and not a soul will know to find them—and if he cries for help no-one will hear—

“Panther! Shit, this is bad. Mona? _One_ of you!”

—and he can’t remember why they’re even doing this in the first place. Skull’s frantic voice is muffled like he’s underwater and he’s shaking so badly he thinks he might drop his knife. Fuck, he’s holding a _knife_. Those are _dangerous_.

“Fox, do you have any—do you have any items— _fuck_ , this—”

Is he supposed to attack with it? Is that what Skull’s screaming for? But he—he can’t remember how—he’s frozen to the spot, unable to flee, unable to—

“ _Please_ ,” and the desperate crack in Skull’s voice finally hits him like a fucking whip. His head snaps up like he’s been punched.

“Ishtar,” he rasps, watching her shimmer before him. He raises his shaking hand and casts Energy Shower.

Awareness drains back in reluctantly and he breathes once, twice. His knee is on the cool stage floor. He’s curled in a ball. Thrice. Panther, Queen, and Mona are shuddering back to life around him. Four times. Five times. In, out. Hands, pressed to his chest and to his boot. Leather on leather. Six times. The air smells like the fog that billows from those machines. Like dust, like the oil in lamps. Seven times. Lights in his eyes, the grit of the stage pressing into his knees. He’s here because he wants to be. He’s here because he wants to be. He’s holding a knife because he can handle it. He can handle it.

The Singer throws his arm out again and Joker calls Ardha. Whispers, “Makajama.”

The Singer doesn’t move for a moment. A moment longer.

Lowers his arm. His voice falters.

“Is everyone okay,” Joker tries to call, croaks instead. Exhausted. He’s here because he wants to be. He’s not going to die. Nobody’s going to die. Nobody’s died yet. “Are you all okay?”

“I wanted to run,” Panther whispers. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “You okay?”

_Please don’t take off my mask…_

“I’m fine,” she mutters. “Fine. Queen? Mona?”

“Guys,” Oracle says, suddenly warning and alert, but she barely manages to get out, “He shook it off,” before the Singer howls in fury, a note so clear and so striking that Joker feels bowled over yet again. He shakes his head violently; it missed him this time, but Skull and Queen weren’t so lucky. “Skull, don’t! Don’t—”

“ _You piece of shit_ ,” Skull bellows, and Joker lunges to tackle him but it’s too late—he launches himself at the Singer and—

“ _Skull!_ ”

—reflects off him at once and crumples to the floor. Noir screams.

_My disguise…_

Joker rushes to Skull to shove a melon pan in his mouth but he barely has time to unwrap the goddamn thing before Queen’s screaming bloody murder herself, and Fox only just manages to haul her back by the arm. She struggles so badly there’s a nasty _pop_ and then she’s screaming in something more like pain, mingled with horrible rage, like a wounded predator. Fox roars, “ _Heal them, NOW!_ ” Desperate, Joker hurls a Relax Gel to Noir, who hurries to apply it.

“ _Hurry up!_ ” Oracle shrieks. Skull stirs and moans and promptly chokes on the bread, which Joker finds counter-productive but he’s long since stopped questioning the cognitive fuckery that keeps them alive.

“You good?” he asks, and Skull grunts, “Effin’ ship-shape.” Clasps Joker’s hand and pulls himself up by the arm that doesn’t still have a _bullet_ in it. Queen’s clear and hissing in pain. Mona’s tending her. The Singer is gearing up to attack again.

“We have to stop it,” Panther says, frantic. “We can’t keep doing this, it’s gonna kill us!”

“Calm down,” Joker says. “Regroup. Everyone guard.”

But they’re scattered, and his forced cool isn’t enough to keep them from shaking this time, even as they back up. The Singer is inhaling again, advancing again, cane dangling from his outstretched hand. It’s topped with a clear gem, blooming red from his gloves, and Joker has the ugly thought that it all looks terribly familiar. “Fox,” he says for good measure, and Fox says, “Masukukaja.”

_Please don’t take off my mask…_

“We need to find a way to get rid of his shield,” Queen says urgently. She’s still wincing, rubbing and rolling her newly replaced shoulder, and Joker has to admit he’s not all that envious, with the cat as their default resident medic for everything from burns to dislocations and he doesn’t even have thumbs.

_Revealing dark…_

Said cat now says, “Psst, Joker. You see that mask?”

“The one he won’t shut up about?” Joker shakes his head. “It’s kind of hard to miss.”

“Right?” Mona smirks. “Makes me think it’ll help us if we can get that thing off him. I bet that’s the source of the shield.”

Panther frowns. They all guard again as the Singer sends another wave through them, but it’s a near miss this time. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want a repeat of… last time.”

“We can barely land a hit on him while he’s got that thing on,” Mona insists. “Even Noir only _just_ hit him, and it didn’t even do any damage. Without it, he’ll be vulnerable!”

“Mona might be right,” Oracle says uncertainly. She scrolls frantically through something. “It’s hard to know for sure, but there’s definitely something weird about that mask. If you can get it off him, it might be easier to actually fight him fair and square.”

“We’ll have to send someone to remove it,” Queen says, businesslike. But the next wave hits before they can discuss any further, and they’re not so lucky this time.

_Sing for me…_

So Joker steps forward.

“Joker?!”

“ _Joker!_ ”

Energy Drop washes over him.

The tune changes…

Joker steps forward.

“Someone _get_ him!”

_Those who have seen your face… draw back in fear…_

Joker steps forward.

“What’s… happening…?”

_I am the mask you wear._

_It’s me they hear_ , Akechi whispers.

“How the _eff_ does Joker know the words, bro?!”

Akechi’s arm stretches toward him, inviting him, and with each step he comes closer. Closer. Akechi pulls back, drawing him in, closer, in perfect step, closer.

“Joker!” Panicked, terrified. Another Energy Shower. “Joker, _please_!”

_In all your strategies, you always knew_ , Akechi tells him. Within arm’s length now. Joker reaches up to meet Akechi’s crimson glove with his own. Golden eyes stare back at him through the mask. Entrancing. _That foe and fantasy…_

“Were both in you,” Joker says aloud.

He reaches up, tender, to touch the side of Akechi’s face. Akechi closes his eyes.

And Joker tears off the mask.

A collective intake of breath rises up over the house. The Thieves, behind him, are quiet; he can feel their perfect stillness, frozen in place. Waiting. The moment of anticipation before the curtain rises, the velvet hush as the audience leans in, diamond dust drifting and twinkling in the silent spotlights.

Then a terrible shriek rips the silence into messy, ragged halves. The mask in Joker’s hands bleeds into nothing over his fingers. Akechi staggers away, hands up over his face, crimson gloves in a new mask that clutches at his features in total agony. He stumbles, his cloak twisting and folding and twining between his legs, trailing darkness as he collapses into the shadows. Joker snaps out of his reverie and his own coat flutters as he darts after him, and the Thieves follow, but there’s only smoke in the wings.

“Did he run?” Makoto gasps, puffing like she’s run the stairs instead of half the stage. Futaba shakes her head. Wordlessly points to the side.

Just a cloak. The cane rests beside it, the tuxedo beneath it. The Singer is gone.

The applause continues.

* * *

_He’s just… gone._

_Hey… you sure he really disappeared? I mean, you said he was gone back in that engine room, remember? But—_

_The signal was gone! What was I supposed to think?!_

_Please don’t fight… We need to stay calm. Can anyone see any sign of him?_

_I can’t see him anywhere… And his… his clothes are here._

_…_

_I wasn’t expecting that._

_Me neither. I thought taking off his mask might make him vulnerable, but…_

_It just made him dead._

_…_

_Let’s keep moving for now, okay?_

* * *

The ticket lies in the shadow of the crystal chandelier, winking morosely in the light. Joker picks it up and turns it over in his hands. The red of his gloves stretches across the letters, staining the cool silver into a more vicious scarlet. _The Master invites you to join him at the Playhouse._

“There’s our way into the next Wing,” Ann says, peeking over his shoulder. He hands her the ticket and she takes it. Ren breathes once, twice. Her cherry red suit is less accusing in the ticket’s sharp reflection and her gloves are sweet, kissing the words in saccharine pink. She hands it off to a grasping Ryuji who bleeds sunshine over and across it, to Yusuke, who cools the burn. Thrice. Joker tugs off his gloves. The terrible hush following the end of the fight is starting to creep away. Four times. The others are watching the ticket, musing over it, but Haru watches him walk back to where the Singer’s remnants lie limp.

She doesn’t say anything. Her eyes betray so little behind that black mask. Noir, she said, for walking on the dark side. Joker lays the gloves over the cloak where his are missing. A tribute, maybe, or a sacrifice.

“Hey, Joker,” says Ryuji, finally noticing him. “You good?”

Ren nods. “How’s the shoulder?”

Skull rolls it back. Impromptu surgery courtesy of Morgana, some funky brain-magic, and Yusuke’s steady hands. “Good as new.”

Thank god, for the little conveniences they’re granted. “Head back,” Ren says. “Enough for today.”

“I’ll say,” Ann groans. She bats her eyes at Yusuke. “Oh, Fox, would you carry me back?”

“I would prefer not to,” Yusuke says, with a hint of apology.

Haru’s eyes haven’t left Ren, but she turns to follow the others now with a soft little nod. Even now he knows she holds nothing against him, though by all rights she ought to. Ann is smacking Ryuji for laughing at her and will certainly bully a piggyback ride out of him before they reach the entrance. Makoto, weakly adopting a job that has never been hers nor has she the qualifications for, is trying to quell the argument before it swells the security level. Ren looks back at the cape. The engine room had hit harder. Two for two as far as scampering into the shadows so Ren wouldn’t watch him die.

Ren raises his bare hands and claps.

* * *

> **[Yusuke]** I have done some research.
> 
> **[Makoto]** Oh?
> 
> **[Yusuke]** I believe when the Opera Shadow sang of “Poe’s Masquerade”, he was referring to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Masque of the Red Death”.
> 
> **[Ann]** A red mask!
> 
> **[Futaba]** so even his shadow is a pretentious prick
> 
> **[Yusuke]** In the story, a man named Prince Prospero barricades himself inside a castle-like abbey with one thousand other nobles in order to escape a plague. Outside the abbey’s walls, common folk suffer and die.
> 
> **[Makoto]** Wait.
> 
> **[Yusuke]** While the world outside is wracked with plague, Prospero holds a masquerade ball for his high-class guests. At midnight, a mysterious figure enters the castle. He wears a robe that looks like a funeral shroud, splattered with blood, and a wearing a mask that looks like a dead victim of the Red Death plague.
> 
> **[Makoto]** Yusuke
> 
> **[Yusuke]** Prospero demands to know his identity, but the figure simply makes his way through the chambers of the abbey. Eventually, he faces Prospero, who shrieks and dies. He is then unmasked by a furious crowd of guests - only for them to discover that there is nothing underneath at all. The guests all then fall victim to the plague, and die.
> 
> **[Ryuji]** uh wow
> 
> **[Futaba]** great story inari

“Hey, wait,” says Morgana, as ever perched precariously on Ren’s shoulder and squinting at his phone. “What was the Shadow singing, again?”

> **[Ren]** Please don’t take off my mask, revealing dark
> 
> **[Ann]** OMG!!
> 
> **[Haru]** Oh!
> 
> **[Makoto]** …
> 
> **[Ryuji]** wait I don’t get it
> 
> **[Ann]** THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WE TOOK OFF HIS MASK!!
> 
> **[Ann]** HE REVEALED DARK!!!!
> 
> **[Ann]** HE DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> **[Ryuji]** YO WTF
> 
> **[Makoto]** You’re right… That’s exactly what happened. It’s just like the story.
> 
> **[Yusuke]** Have I been helpful?
> 
> **[Ren]** Thank you, Yusuke.
> 
> **[Haru]** So… What does this mean?
> 
> **[Futaba]** I mean doesn’t the story sound like us
> 
> **[Futaba]** like, punishing people with power who ignore the suffering of ordinary people
> 
> **[Haru]** I was going to say it sounded like him.
> 
> **[Haru]** Killing them all in one fell swoop by making them confront the nature of their sins.
> 
> **[Ann]** kids can we lighten up a bit
> 
> **[Makoto]** I suppose it’s becoming clearer and clearer the similarities between us.
> 
> **[Futaba]** his nerd crow mask totally looked like a plague doctor mask too
> 
> **[Ann]** Hey, you’re right.
> 
> **[Ryuji]** Ain’t the Poe guy the one who wrote that story about a crow?
> 
> **[Makoto]** A raven, actually, but yes.
> 
> **[Yusuke]** I’m surprised you knew that.
> 
> **[Ryuji]** HEY
> 
> **[Futaba]** It’s all connected… ＼(º □ º l|l)/
> 
> **[Futaba]** If I didn’t know better I’d say our writers know what they’re doing
> 
> **[Ann]** Huh??
> 
> **[Ren]** It’s late. Mona says to go to bed.
> 
> **[Ren]** Get some rest. You’ve all earned it.
> 
> **[Ryuji]** we goin in tomorrow?
> 
> **[Futaba]** don’t even ASK
> 
> **[Futaba]** joker never decides until one second beforehand just in case he needs to return a DVD or something
> 
> **[Futaba]** like hello joker it’s 20XX
> 
> **[Futaba]** just stream
> 
> **[Ren]** Yeah, we’re going in. Meet here tomorrow morning.
> 
> **[Futaba]** (ʘ言ʘ╬)
> 
> **[Ann]** Ren… Are you sure?
> 
> **[Ren]** We need to get this done as soon as possible.
> 
> **[Makoto]** Well…
> 
> **[Haru]** Understood.
> 
> **[Haru]** We’ll be there.
> 
> **[Futaba]** yeah
> 
> **[Yusuke]** Bright and early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> believe it or not i am not a philosophy major this is just what i am like, as a person. most of that was pulled from classes i have taken but, again, im not, qualified, so, grain of salt, sorry, wont stop talking about it though you havent seen the last of meeeee
> 
> akechi's song obviously is [beneath the mask](https://open.spotify.com/track/5XLXrm5JVMdOus1fWmTOFw?si=vL0GQeghSpe2nrkgyKdDsg) and also a bit of rewritten phantom because, you know. watched a lot of [this performance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fKKiaSLLEY) for inspo.


End file.
